5 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

GIFT  OF 
Thomas  Condit 


k  ^k 


5, 


f 


:v 


TEN  BLIND  LEADERS 
OF  THE  BLIND 


By 
ARTHUR  M.  LEWIS 


CHICAGO 
CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 

1010. 


CONTENTS 


Page 

PREFACE    3 

I.     BENJAMIN  KIDD   7 

II.     HENRY   GEORGE    28 

III.  IMMANUBL   KANT    47 

IV.  PROF.   RICHARD   T.   ELY 65 

V.     CESARE  LOMBROSO   S3 

VI.     MAX  STIRNER   102 

VII.     THOMAS   CARLYLE    : 120 

VIII.     ALBERT  SCHaFFLE  142 

IX.     AUGUST   COMTE    162 

X.     BISHOP  SPALDING  181 


LOAM  STACK 


OTFT 


PREFACE. 


If  this  second  volume  of  Garrick  Lectures 
meets  with  the  same  enthusiastic  and  wide- 
spread appreciation  as  greeted  the  first  the 
author  will  be  more  than  satisfied.  "Evolu- 
tion, Social  and  Organic,"  kept  the  printers 
rushing  for  three  editions  and  had  the  largest 
advance  sale  of  any  Socialist  book  written  in 
this  country. 

Whatever  criticisms  have  been  made  against 
the  Garrick  lectures  generally  have  not  been 
directed  against  them  as  they  appear  when 
published  in  a  book  but  against  their  being 
delivered  on  a  public  platform.  This  criticism 
will  probably  continue,  as  the  alleged  cause 
for  it  is  not  likely  to  be  very  materially  abated. 

These  lectures  attempt  something  new  in 
Socialist  lecturing  in  this  country.  Hitherto 
all  our  public  speaking  has  been  purely  of  the 
propaganda  order  and  with  a  strong  campaign 
flavor.  This  was  justified  by  the  numerical 
weakness  of  the  movement  and  the  necessity 
for  securing  new  converts.  Nowadays,  how- 
ever, it  is  different.    We  have  a  large  army 

S    138 


4  PREFACE 

of  Socialists  which  is  especially  numerous  in 
the  cities  and  this  army  provides  a  field  for 
lectures  designed  to  educate  Socialists  them- 
selves in  the  full  scope  of  their  own  philoso- 
phy. 

While  all  that  is  necessary  to  learn  before 
one  votes  the  Socialist  ticket  or  joins  the 
party,  may  be  learned  at  a  single  meeting, 
all  students  of  the  Socialist  philosophy  know 
that  its  mastery  means  many  years  of  hard 
study,  and  brings  with  it  an  excellent  general 
education.  These  Garrick  Lectures  are  deliv- 
ered with  a  view  to  this  latter  development 
and  they  should  not  be  judged  by  the  stand- 
ards which  apply  to  a  campaign  propaganda 
speech. 

The  main  criticism  is  that  the  anti-theo- 
logical note  is  too  pronounced.  I  may  say 
here  that  it  has  always  been  my  aim  to  give 
this  note  the  same  strength  and  quality  which 
it  possesses  in  our  accepted  standard  Socialist 
literature.  This  criticism  usually  comes  from 
comrades  to  whom  this  literature  is  wKolly 
unfamiliar,  and  eventually,  as  they  become 
acquainted  with  it,  through  the  medium  of 
these  lectures,  their  criticism  is  replaced  by 
thanks  —  thanks  especially  that  I  did  not  yield 
to  their  advice. 

I  might  occupy  pages  in  an  effort  to  explain 


PREFACE 


the  specific  object  which  these  lectures  have 
in  view  without  succeeding  nearly  so  well  as 
I  now  do  by  quoting  the  following  from  Fer- 
dinand Lassalle's  speech  in  defense  of  his 
work,  made  before  the  court  in  reply  to  the 
charge  of  arousing  class  hatred  by  the  public 
prosecutor : 

"The  Egyptian  fellah  warms  the  earth  of 
his  squalid  mud  hut  with  the  mummies  of 
the  Pharaohs  of  Egypt,  the  all-powerful  build- 
ers of  the  everlasting  pyramids.  Customs, 
conventions,  codes,  dynasties,  states,  nations 
come  and  go  in  incontinent  succession.  But, 
stronger  than  these,  never  disappearing,  for- 
ever growing,  from  the  earliest  beginnings  of 
the  Ionic  philosophy,  unfolding  in  an  ever- 
increasing  amplitude,  outleaping  all  else, 
spreading  from  one  nation  and  from  one  peo- 
ple to  another,  and  handed  down,  with  devout 
reverence,  from  age  to  age,  there  remains  the 
stately  growth  of  scientific  knowledge." 

And  again:  . 

"The  great  destiny  of  our  age  is  precisely1 
this  —  which  the  dark  ages  had  been  unable 
to  conceive,  much  less  to  achieve  —  the  dis- 
semination of  scientific  knowledge  among  the 
body  of  the  people.  The  difficulties  of  this 
task  may  be  serious  enough,  and  we  may  mag- 
nify them  as  we  like,  —  still,  our  endeavors  are 


3  PREFACE 

ready  to  wrestle  with  them  and  our  nightly 
vigils  will  be  given  to  overcoming  them. 

"In  the  general  decay  which,  as  all  those 
who  know  the  profounder  realities  of  history 
appreciate,  has  overtaken  European  history  in 
all  its  bearings,  there  are  but  two  things  that 
have  retained  their  vigor  and  their  propagat- 
ing force  in  the  midst  of  all  that  shriveling 
blight  of  self-seeking  that  pervades  European 
life.  These  two  things  are  science  and  the 
people,  science  and  the  workingman.  And  the 
union  of  these  two  is  alone  capable  of  invigor- 
ating European  culture  with  a  new  life. 

"The  union  of  these  two  polar  opposites  of 
modern  society,  science  and  the  workingman, 
—  when  these  two  join  forces  they  will  crush 
all  obstacles  to  cultural  advance  with  an  iron 
hand,  and  it  is  to  this  union  that  I  have  re- 
solved to  devote  my  life  so  long  as  there  is 
breath  in  my  body." 

To  this  I  might  add,  what  Lassalle  believed, 
but  which  it  would  hardly  have  been  wise  to 
tell  his  prosecutors,  that  the  union  of  these 
two  forces,  science  and  the  workingman,  will 
crush  all  obstacles,  not  only  to  "cultural  ad- 
vance" but  also  to  "revolutionary  advance." 

ARTHUR  M.  LEWIS. 
New  York,  Aug.  20,  '08. 


TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE 
BLIND 

I. 

Benjamin  Kidd. 

All  students  of  social  questions  of  any  pen- 
etration have  observed  the  backward  condition 
of  sociology.  Kidd  observed  this  and  bewailed 
it  all  the  more  as  he  believed  himself  destined 
to  change  it. 

The  manner  in  which  he  sets  about  his  task 
is  full  of  promise.  He  is  an  implicit  believer 
in  biological  science.  He  knows  why  sociology 
is  at  sea.  It  is  because  the  sociologist  has  not 
paid  sufficient  attention  to  biology  and  its 
methods.  His  book  "Social  Evolution"  con- 
tains no  finer  passage  than  the  one  in  which 
he  expresses  this  idea:  "By  these  sciences 
which  deal  with  human  society  it  seems  to 
have  been  for  long  forgotten  that  in  that  soci- 
ety we  are  merely  regarding  the  highest 
phenomena  in  the  history  of  life,  and  that 
consequently  all  departments  of  knowledge 
which  deal  with  social  phenomena  have  their 

7 


8     TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

true  foundations  in  the  biological  sciences." 
How  Kidd  could  begin  so  well  and  end  by 
describing  all  progress  in  terms  of  religion  we 
shall  see  later. 

Since  there  is  a  lengthy  chapter  about  the 
middle  of  the  book,  explaining  the  danger  of 
Socialism,  we  are  more  than  a  little  surprised 
to  find  the  following  on  the  second  page  of 
the  volume. 

"Despite  the  great  advances  which  science 
has  made  during  the  past  century  in  almost 
every  other  direction,  there  is,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, no  science  of  human  society  properly 
so  called. 

"What  knowledge  there  is  exists  in  a  more 
or  less  chaotic  state  scattered  under  many 
heads ;  and  it  is  not  improbably  true,  however 
much  we  may  hesitate  to  acknowledge  it,  that 
the  generalizations  which  have  recently  tended 
most  to  foster  a  conception  of  the  unity  of 
underlying  laws  operating  amid  the  complex 
social  phenomena  of  our  time,  have  not  been 
those  which  have  come  from  the  orthodox 
scientific  school.  They  have  rather  been  those 
advanced  by  that  school  of  social  revolution- 
ists, of  which  Karl  Marx  is  the  most  command- 
ing figure." 

Kidd  is  a  thorough  Darwinian;  he  is  an  ad- 
mirer of  Weismann   and   accepts   his   views; 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  9 

he  is  thoroughly  convinced  that  the  theories 
of  these  two  great  savants  are  destined  to 
prove  the  salvation  of  sociology. 

There  are  two  rather  grave  deficiencies  how- 
ever, in  Kidd's  biological  education.  He 
worked  out  his  theory  too  early  to  get  the 
benefit  of  Krapotkin's  "Mutual  Aid"  and  De 
Vries'  "Mutation."  Had  he  looked  up  even 
the  earlier  of  Krapotkin's  articles,  which  were 
then  appearing  in  the  Nineteenth  Century 
Review,  he  would  probably  have  had  less  to 
say  about  the  "ceaseless  and  inevitable  strug- 
gle and  competition"  which  seem  to  him'  to  be 
in  operation  always  and  everywhere. 

He  rejects,  of  course,  the  old  cataclysmic 
geology,  and  magnifies  the  slowness  of  evolu- 
tion, after  the  fashion  of  the  Darwinians  of 
twenty  years  ago.  Could  he  have  known  of 
De  Vries'  experiments  and  their  results  he 
might  have  modified  his  views  about  the  "slow- 
ness" of  organic  evolution. 

He  is  quite  positive  that  the  fundamental 
law  of  social  progress  can  be  found  in  Darwin- 
ian science  as  he  knows  it,  and  he  plunges 
boldly  in.  The  search  is  brief  and  successful ; 
he  finds  it  at  the  very  threshold.  It  is  nothing 
less  than  Darwin's  great  principle  of  natural 
selection.  In  the  lower  forms  of  organic  life 
the  inferior  members  are  sacrified  so  that  the 


10  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

few  superior  individuals  might  alone  propagate 
and  thus  preserve  the  highest  possible  effici- 
ency of  the  species.  If  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence could  be  suspended  here,  the  inferior 
as  well  as  the  superior  would  propagate,  there- 
fore the  progress  of  the  species  would  cease 
and  almost  immediately,  degeneracy  would  set 
in.  It  is  clear  then  that  progress  among  these 
lower  creatures  is  due  to  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence in  which  the  unfit  are  invariably 
weeded  out  in  the  interest  of  a  few  superiors. 
Kidd  lifts  this  theory  bodily  over  into  the 
domain  of  human  society.  Here  it  means  that 
the  mass  of  men  must  consent,  in  the  interests 
of  progress,  to  be  driven  to  the  wall  in  order 
that  a  few  more  excellent  individuals  may  be 
selected  to  rule  society  and  keep  it  at  the  max- 
imum of  efficiency.  Had  Kidd  known  how 
thoroughly  Krapotkin  proved  his  case  in  his 
contention  of  the  superiority  of  mutual  aid 
against  mutual  struggle  as  a  factor  in  prog- 
ress, his  confidence  in  his  own  theory  would 
have  been  much  less  pronounced.  Then  he 
would  have  known  that  as  we  rise  in  the 
organic  scale  co-operation  usually  takes  the 
place  of  competition  to  an  ever  increasing  de- 
gree. Even  though  Kidd  overlooks  this  or 
fails  to  appreciate  its  force,  he  still  sees  a  great 
difference  between  the  lower  organic  world 
and  human  society. 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  11 

This  difference  which  he  sees  is  the  differ- 
ence between  the  play  of  blind,  unconscious 
forces,  and  the  power  of  human  reason.  It 
was  precisely  this  difference  which  Lester  F. 
Ward  observed  and  made  the  basis  of  his  soci- 
ology. Between  Kidd  and  Ward  the  contrast 
is  complete.  Ward  believes  that  future  prog- 
ress depends  on  the  increased  use  of  reason; 
Kidd  believes  such  a  course  would  be  fraught 
with  disaster,  and  that  progress  depends  on 
our  not  meddling  with  the  forces  of  nature  in 
general  and  the  struggle  for  existence  in  partic- 
ular. Huxley  maintained  that  those  societies 
are  most  nearly  perfect  in  which  "the  struggle 
for  existence  is  most  strictly  limited."  Darwin 
said :  "Those  communities  which  included  the 
greatest  number  of  sympathetic  members 
would  flourish  best  and  rear  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  offspring/'  Krapotkin  even  disputes 
the  value  of  struggle  among  animals,  asserting 
that  even  here  "no  progressive  evolution  of  the 
species  can  be  based  upon  periods  of  keen 
competition."  This  is  a  phase  of  evolution 
which  never  -came  within  Kidd's  limited  vision 
—  unfortunately  for  his  whole  theory. 

Kidd  therefore  takes  the  astounding  position 
that  the  continuance  of  human  progress  de- 
pends on  the  mass  of  men  refusing  to  use  their 
reason  for  the  alleviation  of  present  hardships. 


12  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

He  concedes  that  for  men  in  society  to  con- 
tinue the  bitter  struggle  for  existence  is  con- 
trary to  reason.  He  admits  also  that  the  pos- 
session of  reason  gives  men  the  power  to  su- 
spend or  abolish  that  struggle.  Why  then  do 
they  not  abolish  it?  It  is  Kidd's  answer  to 
this  pertinent  question  which  constitutes  the 
foundation  of  his  system. 

In  the  first  place,  if  they  did  progress  would 
cease.  His  interesting  chapter  on  the  "Condi- 
tions of  Human  Progress"  is  devoted  to  the 
development  of  this  theory.  We  are  presented 
with  a  resume  of  the  history  of  man  which 
might  well  have  been  written  in  answer  to 
Krapotkin's  treatment  of  the  same  theme  in 
"Mutual  Aid."  He  says  of  man:  "Looking 
back  through  the  glasses  of  modern  science 
we  behold  him  at  first  outwardly  a  brute,  feebly 
holding  his  own  against  many  fierce  compe- 
titors." And  again:  "Looking  back  through 
the  history  of  life  anterior  to  man,  we  find  it 
to  be  a  record  of  ceaseless  progress  on  the 
orfe  hand  and  ceaseless  stress  and  competition 
on  the  other.  This  orderly  and  beautiful  world 
which  we  see  around  us  is  now,  and  always 
has  been,  the  scene  of  incessant  rivalry  be- 
tween all  the  forms  of  life  inhabiting  it  — 
rivalry  too,  not  chiefly  conducted  between  dif- 
ferent  species  but  between   members   of   the 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  13 

same  species.  The  plants  in  the  green  sward 
beneath  our  feet  are  engaged  in  silent  rivalry 
with  each  other,  a  rivalry  which  if  allowed  to 
proceed  without  outside  interference  would 
know  no  pause  until  the  weaker  were  exterm- 
inated." And,  he  concludes,  "Other  things 
being  equal,  the  wider  the  limits  of  selection, 
the  keener  the  rivalry,  and  the  more  rigid  the 
selection,  the  greater  will  be  the  progress." 
When  Kidd  comes  to  human  society  he  still 
sees  this  "rivalry"  unabated.  "It  is  necessary 
to  keep  the  mind  fixed  on  a  single  feature  of 
man's  history,  namely,  the  stress  and  strain 
under  which  his  development  proceeds.  His 
societies,  like  the  individuals  comprising  them, 
are  to  be  regarded  as  the  product  of  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  they  exist,  —  the  sur- 
vivals of  the  fittest  in  the  rivalry  which  is 
constantly  in  progress."  The  divergence  be- 
tween Kidd  and  Krapotkin  is  not  as  to  the 
struggle  between  societies,  though  even  here 
there  is  some  difference,  but  in  that  Krapotkin 
maintains  that  victory  falls  to  those  societies 
which  most  thoroughly  suspend  the  struggle 
and  competition  within  their  own  borders, 
while  Kidd  holds  the  exact  opposite. 

However  this  controversy  may  be  ultimately 
decided,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  existing  soci- 
ety, which  marks  the  highest  point  yet  reached 


14  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

in  the  history  of  civilization,  is  still  ramified 
with  the  struggle  for  existence  between  the 
majority  of  its  members.  And  Kidd  freely 
acknowledges  that  this  struggle  is  responsible 
for  that  appalling  poverty  which  is  the  de- 
spair of  all  reformers.  There  is  no  disposition 
on  his  part  to  gloss  this  over.  He  is,  on  the 
other  hand,  anxious  to  prove  its  existence  and 
produces  witnesses  of  great  importance.  He 
is  careful  to  show  that  the  demand  for  im- 
provement is  not  limited  to  demagogues.  Al- 
though Huxley  opposed  Individualism  and 
Socialism  both,  he  was  heartily  sick  of  things 
as  they  are.  He  said:  "Even  the  best  of 
modern  civilizations  appears  to  me  to  exhibit  a 
condition  of  mankind  which  neither  embodies 
any  worthy  ideal  nor  even  possesses  the  merit 
of  stability.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  express  the 
opinion  that  if  there  is  no  hope  of  a  large  im- 
provement of  the  condition  of  the  greater  part 
of  the  human  family;  if, it  is  true  that  the  in- 
crease of  knowledge,  the  winning  of  a  greater 
dominion  over  nature  which  is  its  consequence, 
and  the  wealth  which  follows  upon  that  do- 
minion are  to  make  no  difference  in  the  extent 
and  intensity  of  want  with  its  concomitant 
physical  and  moral  degradation  among  the 
masses  of  the  people,  I  should  hail  the  advent 
of   some    kindly    comet    which    would  sweep 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  15 

the  whole  affair  away."    Again  Huxley  says: 

"What  profits  it  to  the  human  Prometheus 
that  he  has  stolen  the  fire  of  heaven  to  be  his 
servant,  and  that  the  spirits  of  the  earth  and 
air  obey  him;  if  the  vulture  of  Pauperism  is 
eternally  to  tear  his  very  vitals  and  keep  him 
on  the  brink  of  destruction  ?" 

And  Kidd  himself  puts  this  question  into 
the  mouth  of  the  Socialists: 

"The  adherents  of  the  new  faith  ask,  What 
avails  it  that  the  waste  places  of  the  earth 
have  been  turned  into  the  highways  of  com- 
merce, if  the  many  still  work  and  want  and 
only  the  few  have  leisure  and  grow  rich? 
What  does  it  profit  the  worker  that  knowledge 
grows  if  all  the  appliances  of  science  are  not 
to  lighten  his  labor  ?  Wealth  may  accumulate, 
and  public  and  private  magnificence  may  have 
reached  a  point  never  before  attained  in  the 
history  of  the  world;  but  wherein  is  society 
the  better,  it  is  asked,  if  the  Nemesis  of  poverty 
still  sits  like  a  hollow-eyed  spectre  at  the 
feast?" 

It  was  the  observance  of  these  terrible  con- 
ditions which  led  John,  Stuart  Mill  to  say  that 
if  he  had  to  choose  "between  communism  with 
all  its  chances  and  the  present  state  of  society 
with    all    its    sufferings    and    injustices....   all 


16  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OP   THE    BLIND 

the  difficulties,  great  and  small,  of  communism 
would  be  but  as  dust  in  the  balance." 

Kidd  is  willing  to  acknowledge  that  the  de- 
mand for  the  abolition  of  this  struggle  for 
existence  and  its  consequent  poverty  is  reason- 
able and  that  Socialism  would  abolish  it. 

He  says :  "It  is  necessary,  if  we  would  un- 
derstand the  nature  of  the  problem  with  which 
we  have  to  deal,  to  disabuse  our  minds  of  the 
very  prevalent  idea  that  the  doctrines  of  social- 
ism are  the  heated  imaginings  of  unbalanced 
brains.  They  are  nothing  of  the  kind ;  they  are 
the  truthful,  unexaggerated  teaching  of  sober 
reason.,, 

He  also  regards  the  critics  of  Socialism  as 
having  failed  to  meet  its  arguments:  "No 
greater  mistake  can  be  made  than  to  suppose," 
says  he,  "that  the  arguments  of  these  writers 
have  been  effectively  answered  in  that  class  of 
literature  which  is  usually  to  be  met  with 
on  the  other  side." 

He  not  only  admits  but  contends  that: 
"The  lower  classes  of  our  population  have  no 
sanction  from  their  reason  for  maintaining  ex- 
isting conditions." 

Even  if  the  abolition  of  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence, with  its  consequent  poverty,  should 
result,  as  Kidd  claims,  in  the  cessation  of  prog- 
ress and  the  sufferers   knew  it  would   bring 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  1? 

that  result,  would  that  knowledge  alone  be 
enough  to  restrain  them  from  so  doing?  Kidd 
himself  thinks  not.  He  thinks  any  such  sup- 
position unreasonable.  In  his  estimation  men 
are  not  influenced  by  such  remote  considera- 
tions. He  quotes  Mallock  who  asks:  "Do 
any  of  us  deny  ourselves  a  single  scuttle  of 
coals  so  as  to  make  our  coalfields  last  one  more 
generation  ?"  Of  course  not.  Future  genera- 
tions will  know  how  to  keep  warm  without 
our  worrying  about  it. 

This  then  is  the  problem  as  it  presents  itself 
to  Kidd:  If  the  working  class,  by  using  its 
reason  and  adopting  Socialism,  could  thereby 
abolish  its  poverty  and  misery,  and  the  only 
penalty  would  be  a  remote  one,  and  it  is  not 
really  influenced  by  remote  considerations, 
why  does  not  the  working  class  act  in  the  mat- 
ter and  secure  emancipation  from  present  ills  ? 
This  is  the  question  which  rises  in  the  minds 
of  Mr.  Kidd's  readers  with  increasing  persist- 
ence. 

It  is  indeed  to  Kidd  himself  a  great  mystery, 
and  once  more  history  repeats  itself  —  mystery 
becomes  the  mother  of  religion.  Kidd  explains 
that  this  unreasonable,  inexplicable  submission 
of  the  working  class  is  the  handiwork  of  re- 
ligion. How  can  it  be  explained  otherwise? 
If  the  phenomenon  is  not  natural  it  must  be 


18  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE  BLIND 

supernatural.  If  it  is  not  reasonable  it  must 
be  religious. 

Now  that  the  theory  comes  into  full  view,  we 
perceive  that  it  is  simply  a  modernized  revival 
of  the  "categorical  imperative"  of  Emanuel 
Kant — that  our  duty,  no  matter  how  difficult 
or  distasteful,  must  be  regarded  as  the  will  of 
God. 

Before  we  go  further  with  our  analysis  let 
us  follow  Kidd  in  his  pitiful  efforts  to  interpret 
history  by  means  of  this  precious  principle. 

In  the  ancient  world,  before  Christianity  ap- 
peared, the  lower  classes  were  always  crushed 
without  mercy  whenever  they  attempted  to  im- 
prove their  miserable  lot.  This  was  because 
the  ruling  class  acted  according  to  the  dictates 
of  reason  only  and  were  not  influenced  by  con- 
siderations of  religion.  The  great  and,  as  it 
appears  to  Kidd,  the  only  religion,  Christianity 
not  having  appeared  yet,  it  is  difficult  to  see 
how  they  could  have  been.  After  the  advent 
of  Christianity  however  it  is  another  story.  At 
the  close  of  the  Roman  Empire  chattel  slavery 
disappeared.  This  must  have  been  because  the 
slaves  revolted,  although  the  records  are  not 
very  explicit.  But  now  the  ruling  class,  in- 
stead of  putting  down  the  rebellion  in  a  sea 
of  blood,  surrenders.  This  is  due  to  the  action 
of  Christianity  which  has  by  this  time  gener- 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  19 

ated  and  conserved  an  "immense  fund  of  al- 
truistic feeling"  which  by  "softening  the  char- 
acter" of  the  slave-owners  made  them  unwil- 
ling to  vigorously  defend  the  institution  which 
gave  property  rights  in  human  flesh. 

The  abolition  of  that  atavistic  revival  of 
chattel  slavery  which  covered  the  Southern 
states  was  accomplished  by  the  teaching  of 
"The  doctrine  of  salvation  and  the  doctrine  of 
the  equality  of  all  men  before  the  Deity,"  and 
not  by  the  action  of  reason,  for  neither  of  these 
doctrines  are  founded  in  reason,  but  in  faith — » 
as  Mr.  Kidd  sees  it.  This  religfious  interpreta- 
tion of  history  is  altogether  too  shallow  and 
unreal  to  call  for  any  extended  criticism,  but 
one  might  remark  in  passing  that  it  hardly 
jibes  with  Mr.  Kidd's  view  that  this  Southern 
slave-owning  class  which  had  its  "character 
softened"  by  the  influence  of  religious  teach- 
ing until  it  surrendered,  should  only  do  so  after 
a  bloody  and  prolonged  struggle  and  when 
surrender  was  by  no  means  a  matter  of  choice. 
Our  philosopher  stoutly  maintains  that  any 
ruling  class  must  be  victorious  unless  its  blows 
are  half-hearted  through  the  influence  of 
religion.  Mr.  Kidd  does  not  possess  the 
historical  vision  to  be  able  to  perceive  that  this 
Southern  ruling  class  was  measuring  blades, 
not  with  its  slaves  but,  with  a  Northern  ruling 


20  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE   BLIND 

class,  and  although  this  Northern  ruling  class 
had  also  experienced  the  benign  influences  of 
religion  there  was  no  apparent  weakness  in  its 
blows. 

Kidd  would  probably  have  explained  this, 
had  he  perceived  it,  by  the  justice  of  their 
cause,  for  it  is  hardly  likely  that  so  purblind  a 
thinker  would  have  seen  that  the  brave 
Northerner  wras  only  defending  another  slave 
system  of  his  own. 

The  French  revolution  is  to  Kidd  not  a 
struggle  between  two  robber  classes  but  a 
struggle  between  the  rulers  and  the  people. 
The  hearts  and  characters  of  the  ruling  classes 
had  been  affected — "softened" — by  "the  great 
body  of  humanitarian  feeling  which  had  been 
slowly  accumulating"  through  the  influence  of 
religion.  "It  was  in  the  hearts  of  these  classes," 
says  the  ingenuous  Kidd,  "and  not  in  the 
streets,  that  the  cause  of  the  people  was  won." 
And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  the  French  ruling 
class,  humanitarianized  and  heart-softened  by 
religion,  gave  in — after  a  fierce  and  sanguinary 
fight. 

We  are  not  surprised  to  find  after  this  that 
Kidd  is  opposed  to  Socialism.  Of  his  numer- 
ous objections  only  one  is  vital  to  his  system. 
That  is,  that  Socialism  would  suspend  the 
struggle  for  existence,  thereby  abolishing  that 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  21 

operation  of  natural  selection  which  he  regards 
as  the  prime  cause  of  all  progress. 

It  is  enough  to  say  here  that  the  idea  of  the 
demoralizing  struggle  for  existence,  which 
curses  existing  society,  being  necessary  to 
future  progress,  is  an  ideological  phantasm  of 
Kidd's  bourgeois  brain;  it  has  no  esesential 
place  in  modern  positive  science.  As  to 
whether  this  struggle,  as  it  now  exists,  secures 
the  survival  of  those  who  are  fittest  in  any 
socially  desirable  sense,  I  have  fully  considered 
in  my  "Reply  to  Haeckel"  in  "Evolution,  So- 
cial and  Organic." 

When  Kidd  sees  the  exploited  working  class 
subordinating  its  own  present  interests  to  the 
future  interests  of  the  race  his  mind  is  playing 
him  a  scurvy  trick — a  trick  which  has  victim- 
ized better  men  than  Kidd.  What  he  conceives 
to  be  the  future  interests  of  the  human  race  are 
nothing  more  than  the  sublimated,  idealized 
interests  of  the  present  ruling  class.  What 
Kidd's  position  really  amounts  to  at  bottom 
is,  that  the  working  class  is  kept  quiet  and 
submissive  in  the  interests  of  the  ruling  class, 
and  as  this  submission  is  neither  sensible  nor 
reasonable,  it  must  be  due  to  religion.  When 
Kidd's  philosophy  is  thus  stripped  of  its 
metaphysical  trappings  there  is  a  great  deal  to 
be  said  in  its  favor. 


22  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

It  will  hardly  do  however,  in  the  twentieth 
century,  to  give  the  sole  credit  for  the  con- 
tinued subjugation  of  the  working  class  to 
religion.  It  may  be  freely  conceded  that  this 
curbing  of  the  oppressed  class  in  society  has 
always  been  the  main  function  of  all  religions. 
It  is  from  this  point  of  view  that  Ruskin, 
speaking  as  one  of  the  well-to-do,  defines  the 
English  national  religion  as :  "The  performance 
of  church  ceremonies,  and  the  preaching  of 
soporific  truths  (or  untruths)  to  keep  the  mob 
quietly  at  work  while  we  amuse  ourselves." 
In  earlier  times,  before  science  had  demoral- 
ized theology,  religion  was  able  to  accomplish 
this  result  almost  unassisted. 

There  is  also  a  considerable  grain  of  truth  in 
Kidd's  contention  that  this  repression  was  of 
service  to  the  race,  distasteful  as  this  may  be 
to  the  average  free-thinker. 

It  is  a  well  known  and  essential  tenet  of  the 
evolutionary  philosophy  that  the  mere  exist- 
ence of  anything  proves  it  to  have  some  real 
place  in  the  general  scheme  of  things,  and  that 
which  has  existed  for  centuries  must  have  had 
some  useful  function  to  perform.  Even  chattel 
slavery  may  be  successfully  defended  on  this 
ground.  The  reason  why  the  Red  Indian  can- 
not adapt  himself  to  European  civilization  is 
probably  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  his  race 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  23 

has  not  been  subjected  to  those  long  centuries 
of  slavery  and  serfdom  which  has  developed  in 
the  white  races  that  capacity  for  sustained  and 
continuous  labor  which  is  indispenable  to 
modern  civilization. 

In  so  far  as  religion  assisted  in  that  painful 
discipline  by  promising  fantastic  and  visionary 
rewards  in  some  future  cloud-land,  thus  render- 
ing the  slavery  more  endurable,  it  has 
functioned  usefully  in  the  development  of  so- 
ciety. While  this  may  justify  religion  in  the 
past,  it  is  hardly  a  good  reason  for  its  pre- 
servation in  the  future,  and  it  is  encouraging 
that  only  an  insignificant  handful  of  very  poorly 
informed  Socialists  consider  it  worth  while  to 
spend  their  energies  bolstering  up  exploded 
superstitions  which  are  useful  only  in  a  slave 
society.  That  this  is  the  real  function  of  re- 
ligious belief,  the  ruling  class  has  always  been 
quick  to  apprehend.  A  fine  example  of  this 
appeared  in  the  German  parliament  when  Mr. 
Windhorst,  member  of  the  Clerical  Party,  ap- 
pealed to  the  bourgeois  legislators  not  to  en- 
courage the  spread  of  irreligion  among  the 
masses.  In  a  moment  of  anger,  he  forgot  the 
listening  Social  Democrats  and  the  listening 
world.  Said  he:  "When  the  people  lose  their 
faith  they  will  no  longer  bear  their  intolerable 


24  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OP   THE   BLIND 

misery,  they  will  rebel."     This  is  really  what 
Kidd  took  three  hundred  pages  to  say. 

Those  who,  accepting  this  view,  conclude 
that  freethought  is  sufficient  to  accomplish  the 
liberation  of  the  working  class,  are  the  victims 
of  a  great  delusion.  The  time  has  long 
passed  when  the  ruling  class  depended  solely 
on  the  priest  for  the  quiescence  of  their 
victims.  Except  among  catholics,  the  priest 
has  ceased  to  be  an  effective  policeman.  The 
protestant  churches  no  longer  contain  any 
considerable  proportion  of  wage  workers.  The 
protestant  worker  has  come  to  recognize  the 
antediluvian  nature  of  biblical  teaching  and  he 
refuses  even  to  listen  to  it.  When  the  protest- 
ant church  conceded  the  occupant  of  the  pew 
the  right  to  use  his  own  judgment,  it  signed 
its  own  death-warrant.  The  catholic  church 
has  always  seen  the  danger  of  this,  and  it  owes 
its  great  power  among  its  working  men  to  its 
logical  and  consistent  policy  of  refusing  to 
allow  them  to  think  for  themselves. 

In  the  twentieth  century  the  ruling  class  has 
weapons  much  more  effective  than  the  anti- 
quated vaporings  of  preachers.  The  news- 
paper has  usurped  the  functions  of  the  pulpit 
and  this  is  why  editors  are  well  paid  while  the 
majority  of  preachers  are  almost  starving. 
Now  that  the  preacher    cannot    "deliver  the 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  25 

goods"  the  capitalist  refuses  to  foot  the  bills. 
Time  was  when  the  priest  was  the  most 
valuable  of  all  the  intellectual  hirelings  of  the 
ruling  class,  but  with  capitalism  this  is  not  so, 
for  the  preacher's  method  of  enslavement  de- 
stroys the  intelligence  of  the  slave  and  renders 
him  incapable  of  useful  service  in  a  mode  of 
wealth  production  which  requires  in  its  work- 
ers an  active  brain,  able  to  comprehend  the 
complex  processes  of  machine  production. 

The  schoolmaster  is  able  to  produce  a  slave 
psychology  and  at  the  same  time  develop  this 
necessary  intelligence.  The  editor  is  able  to 
contribute  to  the  impregnation  of  the  worker's 
brain  with  bourgeois  ideas,  while  he  preserves 
his  own  influence  by  sprinkling  his  effusions 
with  scientific  ideas. 

Therefore  the  schoolmaster  and  the  editor, 
and  for  similar  reasons  the  professor,  are  rated 
above  the  preacher,  and  the  preaching  pro- 
fession is  fast  becoming  a  negligible  quantity. 

In  the  past  weeks,  we  have  had  a  notably 
clear  demonstration  of  this.  At  a  meeting  of 
the  Pittsburg  Ministerial  Union,  Jan.  13,  '08, 
the  Rev.  Joseph  Cochrane  of  Philadelphia  de- 
livered himself  as  follows : 

"Ministers  are  underpaid  and  the  scale  of 
their  pay  and  advancement    in    the    last  ten 


26  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

years  does  not  begin  to  compare  with  the 
average  hodcarrier." 

"Conditions  existing  to-day  in  the  educa- 
tional institutions  of  the  country  are  exactly 
the  reverse  of  what  they  were  twenty-five  or 
thirty  years  ago.  Where  formerly  80  per  cent 
of  the  students  graduated  from  the  great 
Eastern  colleges  left  their  studies  to  enter  the 
ministry,  while  20  per  cent  took  up  the  practice 
of  law,  medicine  or  business,  of  the  students 
graduated  by  the  Eastern  universities  last  year 
only  2V2  per  cent  were  trained  for  the  ministry. 
This  meant  only  one  minister  for  every  twenty- 
five  pupils  in  the  East. 

"The  majority  of  students  who  now  enter 
colleges  to  study  for  the  ministry  leave  their 
studies  to  take  up  law,  medicine,  dentistry  or 
business.  The  atmosphere  of  the  institutions 
in  which  they  receive  their  training  is  to  be 
lamented. 

"In  this  materialistic  age,  the  dearth  of 
ministers  is  due,  at  least  to  some  extent,  to  the 
small  salaries  to  be  had." 

And  so  Mr.  Kidd's  theory  that  religion  is 
alone  responsible  for  the  continued  submission 
of  the  working  class  is  steadily  and  rather 
rapidly  losing  ground,  so  that  propaganda  lim- 
ited to  modern  liberalism  —  free-thought  — 
has  already  become  an  anachronism.    Capital- 


BENJAMIN    KIDD  27 

ism  has  filled  its  armory  with  intellectual  wea- 
pons that  are  more  effective  because  more 
modern.  Among  its  choicest  are  the  press  and 
the  lecture  platform.  The  workers  are  begin- 
ning to  realize  more  than  ever  that  the  only 
remedy  for  this  is  a  platform  and  a  press  of 
their  own.  As  this  realization  becomes  more 
vivid  new  Socialist  platforms  are  established 
and  Socialist  papers  are  born  over-night. 

Thus  does  the  working  class  fight  fire  with 
fire.  It  develops  its  own  social  intelligence  and 
promotes  a  revolutionary  psychology ;  a  psych- 
ology which  grows  out  of  the  economic  world, 
the  world  of  real  things,  freed  from  supersti- 
tions theological  and  otherwise,  a  psychology 
which  when  it  has  gathered  sufficient  force  and 
begins  to  find  mass-expression  will  relegate  to 
history  the  last  form  of  economic  slavery. 


II. 

Henry  George. 

Few  theories  have  been  more  thoroughly 
discredited  than  the  "great  man"  theory.  And 
yet,  there  is  no  more  convenient  method  of 
arranging  in  one's  mind  the  great  discoveries 
of  positive  science  than  to  link  them  by  mental 
association  with  the  names  of  those  who  dis- 
covered or  most  conspicously  advocated  them. 
Of  all  the  aids  to  the  memory  this  is  perhaps 
the  most  valuable  to  the  student.  In  dealing 
with  the  complex  mass  of  theories  which  con- 
stitute modern  thought  it  is  not  enough  to 
know  what  was  said,  but  who  said  it  and  when 
the  statement  was  made. 

The  practical  utility  of  linking  these  things 
together  has  unduly  prolonged  the  existence 
of  the  idea  that  the  great  rnan  created  the  great 
idea  or  movement  with  which  his  name  is  join- 
ed. But  the  introduction  of  scientific  methods 
into  the  domain  of  history  and  sociology  is 
destroying  whatever  remains  of  this  theory,  in 
spite  of  that  advantage. 

It  is  now  generally  accepted  that  the  great 
man  is  the  creature  of  his  epoch  and  that  his 
greatness  is  founded  in  his  ability  to  register 

28 


HENRY    GEORGE  29 

more  correctly,  and  express  more  clearly,  the 
fundamental  tendencies  of  his  day.  Thus, 
while  we  aid  the  memory,  and,  in  some  mea- 
sure, assist  the  understanding  by  consulting 
the  great  man's  biography,  we  must  look  for 
the  real  origin  of  his  ideas  in  the  historical 
period  in  which  he  appears  and  the  social  en- 
vironment by  which  he  is  surrounded. 

In  seeking  the  origin  and  tracing  the  genesis 
of  the  theory  with  which  the  name  of  Henry 
George  is  most  closely  and  distinctively  as- 
sociated, we  are  obliged  to  go  back  to  feudal- 
ism. 

Metaphorically  speaking,  feudalism  may  be 
described  as  a  "land  society."  Its  chief  laborer 
was  the  serf,  and  he  was  chained  to  the  soil. 
Its  ruling  class  was  a  landlord  class,  and  the 
main  body  of  its  laws  related  to  landed  pro- 
perty. Its  kings  were  the  puppets  of  the  own- 
ers of  fiefs  and  baronies,  and  they  reigned  in 
comparative  peace  only  so  long  as  they  did  not 
insist  on  too  large  a  share  of  the  incomes  which 
those  noble  gentlemen  derived  from  land.  The 
medieval  church  owed  its  immense  power  to 
its  extensive  participation  in  those  revenues, 
owning,  as  Draper  says,  "one-third  of  the  soil 
of  Europe."  The  present  pontiff  is  perfectly 
logical  when  he  casts  a  longing  eye  backward 
to  what  was  for  his  ecclesiastical  corporation 


30         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

the  golden  age  and  wages  a  valiant  but  des- 
pairing warfare  against  "modernism." 

Feudalism,  however,  was  no  more  immortal 
than  any  other  social  form;  the  seventeenth 
century  saw  signs  of  change ;  early  in  the  eight- 
eenth it  was  marked  for  destruction,  and  before 
the  close  it  was  finally  overthrown.  But  land 
was  too  important  a  material  and  social  factor 
to  lose  all  its  influence,  and  although  the  lords 
of  land  were  compelled  to  abdicate  as  social 
rulers  to  the  lords  of  capital,  they  retained 
enough  power  to  survive  as  troublesome  and, 
sometimes,  formidable  rivals.  For  some  de- 
cades after  the  advent  of  capitalist  society,  the 
main  class  struggle  was,  as  it  had  been  before 
the  change,  between  the  capitalist  and  the  land- 
lord, but  in  the  matter  of  social  supremacy  the 
tables  were  turned. 

This  struggle  found  its  most  graphic  presen- 
tation in  England.  While  the  English  working 
class  had  not  as  yet  developed  revolutionary 
ideas,  it  played  an  important  role,  and  it  played 
shrewdly  for  its  own  hand.  The  landlords  had 
their  own  political  party  —  the  conservative 
party;  the  capitalists  were  represented  by  the 
liberal  party. 

The  ideal  candidate  of  the  conservative  party 
was  a  scion  of  the  landed  nobility;  the  liberals 
preferred  a  bourgeois  manufacturer.    The  land- 


HENRY    GEORGE  31 

lord  candidates  received  their  votes  mainly 
from  the  city  victims  of  the  capitalist,  and  when 
elected  they  passed  factory  acts  which  curtailed 
manufacturers'  profits.  The  capitalists  obtain- 
ed their  votes  from  the  farmers  and  farm  labor- 
ers in  the  counties,  and,  when  in  office,  passed 
land  laws  to  get  even  with  the  landlords.  Thus, 
while  the  thieves  fell  out,  English  workers  im- 
proved the  shining  hour. 

When  English  capitalists  waxed  fat  and 
bought  fine  estates  from  impoverished  land- 
lords, and  these  same  landlords  bought  stocks 
and  embarked  into  industry,  the  class  line  was 
wiped  out  and  the  struggle  ceased.  The  two 
large  parties  were  now  one,  except  in  name; 
the  workers  found  it  impossible  to  get  further 
concessions  by  voting  for  either,  so  they  pro- 
ceeded to  elect  representatives  of  their  own, 
chosen  from  their  own  ranks. 

But  this  later  development  is  a  discursion 
from  our  theme  —  what  concerns  us  here  is  the 
struggle  between  the  decreasing  landlord  and 
the  increasing  capitalist  which  raged  back  and 
forth  during  the  earlier  and  greater  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  landlords  enacted  the 
corn  laws  (tariff  on  wheat),  and  this  more  than 
doubled  the  price  of  bread.  This  compelled 
the  capitalists  to  pay  higher  wages  to  meet  the 
increased  cost  of  living.     Then  the  capitalist 


82  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OP   THE   BLIND 

carried  on  a  great  anti-corn  law  agitation,  led 
by  Cobden  and  Bright.  They  succeeded  in 
repealing  the  corn  tariff,  and  English  wheat 
land,  unable  to  compete  with  the  United  States, 
went  almost  entirely  out  of  cultivation.  While 
the  struggle  lasted  each  side  blamed  the  other 
for  all  the  social  ills  that  existed. 

As  the  capitalist  increased  in  wealth,  his 
intellectual  defenders  became  more  numerous. 
Against  the  landlord  the  capitalist  had  two 
main  complaints.  First,  the  landlord  reduced 
his  profits  by  limiting  child  labor  by  passing 
factory  acts.  Second,  when  the  worker  had 
been  exploited  in  the  factory,  instead  of  the 
capitalist  being  allowed  to  put  all  the  plunder 
in  his  own  pocket,  he  was  obliged  to  divide  up 
with  the  landlord  in  the  form  of  ground  rent. 
In  voicing  his  first  complaint,  the  capitalist  se- 
cured the  services  of  one  of  the  greatest  philos- 
ophers then  living — no  less  a  person  than  Herb- 
ert Spencer.  Spencer  stoutly  maintained  that 
any  interference  with  the  child  labor  would  re- 
sult in  the  coming  of  slavery  . 

As  to  the  capitalists'  effort  to  cut  off  the  land- 
lord's share  of  the  plunder,  a  champion  made 
his  appearance  on  the  other  side  of  the  world. 
This  was  none  other  than  the  now  renowned 
Henry  George,  the  prophet  of  San  Francisco. 
Henry  George  saw  clearly  that  there  was 


HENRY    GEORGE  33 

nothing  the  matter  with  the  capitalist.  What 
the  capitalist  received  he  came  by  honestly 
and  according  to  the  laws  of  God  and  nature. 
Labor  and  capital  were  Siamese  twins,  their 
interests  were  identical  —  high  interest  meant 
high  wages,  and  vice  versa,  low  wages  meant  a 
small  return  for  capital.  There  was  but  one 
robber  preying  on  society  —  the  landlord.  The 
capitalist  and  the  laborer  should  unite  their 
forces,  stop  the  exactions  of  this  plunderer  and 
thereby  introduce  the  millenium.  Certain  sim- 
ple-minded persons  argued  that  if  rent  was  rob- 
bery, the  thing  for  the  robbed  community  to 
do  was  to  take  the  land  away  from  the  land- 
lord and  thus  put  an  end  to  his  income  from 
rent.  But  Henry  George  refused  to  be  a  party 
to  any  such  proceedings. 

He  had  a  scheme  which  his  few  remaining  dis- 
ciples still  imagine  to  have  been  original  with 
him,  but  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  had  been 
considered  and  condemned  by  Marx  a  quarter 
of  a  century  before.  This  was  that  the  landlord 
should  keep  his  land  but  should  be  compelled 
to  turn  his  rent  over  to  the  state.  As  this 
would  give  the  state  an  income  sufficient  to 
meet  all  its  expenses,  no  other  tax  should  be 
levied  and  the  capitalist  could  be  relieved  of  all 
further  payments. 

In  1847,  in  an  article  against  Proudhon,  Marx 


34  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OP   THE    BLIND 

wrote :  "We  can  conceive  how  economists  such 
as  Mill  the  elder,  Cherbullez,  Hilditch  and 
others,  have  demanded  that  rent  be  turned  over 
to  the  state  to  the  end  of  removing  taxation. 
This  is  the  frank  expression  of  hatred  which  the 
industrial  capitalist  entertains  for  the  land 
owner,  who  seems  to  him  a  useless  and  super- 
fluous entity  in  the  scheme  of  bourgeois  or  cap- 
italist production." 

In  a  letter  to  a  friend  in  New  York,  who  had 
sent  him  a  copy  of  "Progress  and  Poverty," 
Marx  says :  "The  whole  thing  is  simply  an  at- 
tempt to  rescue  the  rule  of  capitalism — in  fact, 
to  rear  it  anew  upon  a  firmer  basis  than  its 
present  one.  This  cloven  hoof,  together  with 
the  donkey's  ears,  peeps  unmistakably  out  of 
the  declamation  of  Henry  George." 

George's  defense  of  the  capitalist  left  him 
under  the  necessity  of  explaining  the  source  of 
the  capitalist's  income.  This  task  is  shouldered 
in  the  third  chapter  of  the  third  book  of  "Pro- 
gress and  Poverty."  Nowhere  in  George's 
work  does  the  "cloven  hoof"  or  the  "donkey's 
ears"  stick  out  so  visibly  as  in  this  chapter.  It 
is  here  that  the  Georgian  philosophy  meets  its 
Waterloo  and  goes  down  to  ignominious  defeat. 
As  Marx  said  of  George :  "He  has  no  inkling  of 
the  nature  of  'surplus  value.'  Following  the 
example  of  English  writers,  but  following  even 


HENRY    GEORGE  85 

these  far  in  the  rear,  he  takes  up  his  time  with 
speculation  upon  the  component  parts  of  sur- 
plus value  —  profit,  rent,  interest,  etc." 

George  begins,  two  chapters  earlier  by  reduc- 
ing the  size  of  his  task.  He  rails  like  a  fishwife 
or  a  Roosevelt  at  Buckle,  Adam  Smith  and 
Stuart  Mill,  men  who,  in  political  economy, 
are  giants  compared  with  his  pigmy  self,  be- 
cause they  classify  the  distribution  of  wealth  as 
"the  rent  of  land,  the  wages  of  labor  and  the 
profits  of  capital.,,  In  this  passage  "profits"  is 
printed  in  capitals  because  this  term  is  ex- 
tremely objectionable  to  our  capitalist  retainer. 
Not  all  the  wealth  received  by  the  capitalist  is 
unearned,  George  maintains,  and  much  of  it 
that  is  described  as  profit  should  be  called 
"wages"  —  the  wages  of  superintendence,  com- 
pensation for  risk,  etc.  Thus  he  declares,  "With 
profits  this  inquiry  has  manifestly  nothing  to 
do.  We  want  to  find  what  it  is  that  determines 
the  division  of  their  joint  produce  between  (1) 
land,  (2)  labor,  (3)  and  capital."  The  figures 
are  interpolated.  All  this  because  George 
wishes  it  to  be  understood  that  the  maligned 
capitalist  is  very  much  of  a  laborer  and  much 
of  his  .profits  should  be  labeled  "the  wages  of 
labor." 

But  even  after  this  rattle  of  tin  cans,  George 
is  obliged  to  admit  that  the  capitalist  receives 


30  TEN   BLIND  LEADERS   OF   THE   BLIND 

much  wealth  which  he  does  not  earn  by  "per- 
sonal exertion."  In  order  to  escape  the  "utter 
bewilderment"  caused  by  such  stupid  persons, 
as  Stuart  Mill,  all  the  unearned  revenue  of  ca- 
pital is  brought  under  the  head  of  "interest." 
Thus  the  problem  is  narrowed  to  ascertaining 
"the  cause  of  interest." 

Bastiat's  theory  is  examined  and  rejected. 
Bastiat's  illustration  of  a  plane  loaned  by  one 
carpenter  to  another,  in  which  the  borrower  is 
supposed  to  get  the  advantage  of  the  productiv- 
ity of  the  plane  as  against  working  without 
one,  is  given  in  detail.  It  is  rejected  on  the 
ground  that  the  borrower  could  have  made  a 
plane  of  his  own.  This  paves  the  way  for  the 
introduction  of  his  own  luminous  theory.  If 
all  the  means  of  increasing  the  quantity  of 
wealth  were  planes,  or  similarly  inanimate 
things,  interest  would  be  impossible.  And  this 
because  the  plane  can  only  give  forth  an  amount 
of  value  equal  to  the  value  put  into  it  by  the 
labor  of  making  it,  and  here  George,  by  way 
of  variety,  blunders  on  a  truth,  but  a  truth  that} 
refuses  to  carry  his  astonishing  conclusions. 

And  now  listen  to  this  Daniel  come  to  judg- 
ment: "But  all  wealth  is  not  of  the  nature  of 
planes,  or  planks,  or  money,  which  has  no  pro- 
ductive power;  nor  is  all  production  merely  the 
turning  into  other  forms  of  this  inert  matter  of 


HENRY    GEORGE  37 

the  universe.  It  is  true  that  if  I  put  away 
money  it  will  not  increase.  But  suppose,  in- 
stead, I  put  away  wine.  At  the  end  of  the  year 
I  will  have  an  increased  value,  for  the  wine  will 
have  increased  in  quality.  Or,  supposing  that  in 
a  country  adapted  to  them  I  set  out  bees ;  at  the 
end  of  the  year  I  will  have  more  swarms  of 
bees,  and  the  honey  which  they  have  made.  Or, 
supposing,  where  there  is  a  range,  I  turn  out 
sheep,  or  hogs,  or  cattle ;  at  the  end  of  the  year 
I  will,  upon  the  average,  also  have  an  increase. 

"Now,  what  gives  the  increase  in  these  cases 
is  something  which,  though  it  generally  re- 
quires labor  to  utilize  it,  is  yet  distinct  and 
separable  from  the  labor  —  the  active  power  of 
nature;  the  principle  of  growth,  of  reproduc- 
tion, which  everywhere  characterizes  all  the 
forms  of  that  mysterious  thing  or  condition 
which  we  call  life.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  it 
is  this  which  is  the  cause  of  interest,  or  the 
increase  of  capital  over  and  above  that  due  to 
labor." 

And  so  the  good  capitalist  does  not  exploit 
labor  at  all.  Part  of  his  income  he  earns  by 
his  own  labor,  the  rest  he  draws  from  the  breed- 
ing powers  of  sheep,  rabbits,  etc. 

"Seems  to  me"  has  proven  prophetical,  for  it 
has  never  even  "seemed"  so  to  anybody  else. 
Even   George's   uncritical   followers   have   re- 


38  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OP   THE   BLIND 

fused  to  swallow  this  grotesque  absurdity.  All 
that  remains  now  is  to  decide  who  shall  be 
acclaimed  the  official  clown  of  political  economy 
and  awarded  the  cap  and  bells  —  Stanley  Je- 
vons,  who  ascribed  panics  to  the  spots  on  the 
sun,  Prof.  Mallock,  who  accounts  wealth  as  the 
reward  of  ability,  or  Henry  George,  who  de- 
rives the  capitalist's  income  from  the  aging  of 
wine  and  the  swarming  of  bees. 

At  the  risk  of  seeming  to  waste  good  space, 
we  might  ask:  If  the  landlord  is  a  robber  be- 
cause he  extracts  "rent"  from  something  which 
is  not  produced  by  human  labor,  but  which  is, 
in  George's  own  language,  the  "gratuitous  of- 
fering of  nature,"  viz.,  land,  how  does  the  cap- 
italist happen  to  be  an  honest  man  when  he 
draws  "interest"  from  "the  active  power  of 
nature,"  which  is  in  no  sense  produced  by 
labor,  but  is  just  as  much  a  "gratuitous  offering 
of  nature"  as  is  land.  In  fact,  this  active  power 
of  nature  is  "land,"  according  to  George's  own 
definition,  for  he  says:  "A  house  and  the  lot 
on  which  it  stands  are  alike  classed  by  the  law- 
yers as  real  estate.  Yet  in  nature  and  relations 
they  differ  widely.  The  one  is  produced  by 
human  labor,  and  belongs  to  the  class  in  pol- 
itical economy  styled  wealth.  The  other  is  a 
part  of  nature,  and  belongs  to  the  elass  in  pol- 
itical economy  styled  land.." 


HENRY    GEORGE  39 

Thus,  according  to  his  own  definition,  if 
George  had  possessed  the  logical  powers  of  a 
well-trained  schoolboy,  he  would  have  seen 
that  his  own  explanation  of  the  "cause  of 
interest"  makes  the  capitalist  a  landlord  deriv- 
ing his  income  from  "a  part  of  nature/'  which, 
according  to  George,  is  a  form  of  land. 

The  truth  of  the  whole  matter  is  that  here, 
as  always,  George  is  a  true  lackey  of  capital. 
He  had  the  vision  of  a  hawk  where  the  land- 
lord is  under  criticism ;  he  is  as  blind  as  a  bat 
when  the  capitalist  is  being  considered.  He 
never  for  a  moment  endangered  the  interests 
of  those  petty  exploiters  who  have  always  paid 
the  bills  of  his  propaganda,  including  the  pub- 
lication of  his  volumes  of  twaddle. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  when  Socialists  came 
into  direct  contact  with  George,  although  they 
were  at  first  sometimes  fooled  by  what  Hux- 
ley calls  George's  "superfluous  rhetorical  con- 
fectionery," as  soon  as  they  saw  the  real  bent 
of  his  teaching  they  began  to  oppose.  In  1883, 
when  he  visited  England  to  lecture  on  the 
invitation  of  the  Land  Reform  Union,  the. 
treasurer,  Mr.  Champion,  and  the  secretary, 
Mr.  Frost,  both  Socialists,  waited  on  George 
and  told  him  that,  unless  he  advocated  the 
nationalization  of  capital  as  well  as  land,  the 
Socialists  in  the  organization  would  be  com- 


40  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

pelled  to  oppose  his  campaign.  To  this  George 
sharply  and  justly  replied  that  they  should 
have  been  able  to  find  out  from  his  books 
what  he  stood  for  before  they  invited  him. 

In  1886,  when  George  was  nominated  for 
Mayor  of  New  York,  Daniel  De  Leon  was  on 
his  platform  and  spoke  at  the  meeting  which 
indorsed  his  nomination,  and  the  Socialists 
generally  gave  him  their  support.  But  a  year 
later  when  George  ran  for  Secretary  of  State 
for  New  York,  the  Socialists  had  learned  their 
lesson  and  made  their  support  conditional  on 
their  principles  being  put  to  the  front,  declar- 
ing "that  the  burning  social  question  is  not  a 
land  tax,  but  the  abolition  of  all  private  prop- 
erty in  the  instruments  of  production."  To 
this  George  replied  that  there  could  be  no 
place  for  the  Socialists  in  the  new  party  if 
they  pressed  their  principles. 

When  the  convention  met  at  Syracuse,  the 
Socialist  delegates  from  New  York  City 
"pressed  their  principles"  and  were  refused 
seats.  The  whole  movement  ended  in  thor- 
ough reaction,  kicking  out  everything  at  all 
progressive  —  from  a  workingman's  point  of 
view. 

Henry  George,  Jr.,  says  of  these  debarred 
Socialists:  "They  consisted  of  a  compara- 
tively few  men  in  New  York  City,  but  what 


HENRY    GEORGE  41 

they  lacked  in  numbers  they  made  up  in  ear- 
nestness and  activity/' 

George's  conventional  and  reactionary  pro- 
clivities appeared  in  the  matter  of  the  Chicago 
anarchists.  Louis  F.  Post  had  written  an 
article  in  which  he  said  that  the  accused  men 
had  not  had  a  fair  trial.  George  said:  "The 
opinion  there  expressed  was  my  opinion,  sim- 
ply because  I  had  received  it  from  him,  until 
I  found  that  the  Supreme  Court  of  Illinois  had 
made  a  unanimous  decision.  Our  bench  is  not 
immaculate,  but  I  could  not  believe  that  every 
one  of  seven  men,  with  the  responsibility  of 
life  and  death  hanging  over  him,  could  unjustly 
condemn  these  men.  In  spite  of  all  pressure, 
I  refused  to  say  anything  about  the  matter 
until  I  had  a  chance  to  somewhat  examine  it 
for  myself,  and  a  reading  of  the  decision  of 
the  Supreme  Court  convinced  me,  as  it  did 
everyone  else  I  got  to  read  it,  that  the  men 
had  not  been  condemned,  as  I  had  previously 
supposed,  for  mere  opinion  and  general  utter- 
ances. Not  satisfied,  however,  with  this,  I 
sought  the  opinion  of  Judge  Maguire  (of  Cal- 
ifornia). *  *  *  At  my  earnest  request,  he 
said  he  would  read  the  papers." 

Judge  Maguire  "read  the  papers"  and 
reached  a  conclusion  which  George  fully  in- 
dorsed— that  the  condemned  anarchists  were 


42  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OP   THE    BLIND 

"all  guilty  of  willful,  deliberate,  premeditated 
murder/'  After  this  George  had  no  more 
twinges  of  conscience  about  "refusing  to  say 
anything"  in  behalf  of  these  victims  of  a  citi- 
zenship which,  by  newspaper  lies  and  screams, 
had  been  transported  into  a  frenzied  mob. 

George  and  his  chief  western  disciple, 
Maguire,  were  a  pretty  pair  of  social  redeem- 
ers. Compare  these  respectable,  conventional, 
press-believing,  court-sustaining,  mental  inver- 
tebrates, with  the  Socialist  revolutionists  who 
spent  half  their  lives  in  jail  and  exile,  because 
they  held  in  contempt  the  lies  of  a  purchased 
press  and  the  decisions  of  venal  courts. 

Nothing  would  do  for  George  but  he  must 
venture  into  philosophy.  He  did  not  possess 
even  the  rudiments  of  an  equipment  for  such 
an  excursion.  But  Herbert  Spencer  had  dis- 
pleased him  in  the  matter  of  "Social  Statics" 
and  now  the  day  of  judgment  was  at  hand. 
Not  only  should  this  recanting  miscreant  be 
taught  a  lesson  on  the  land  question,  but  the 
deplorable  weakness  of  the  synthetic  philoso- 
phy should  be  exposed  to  a  deceived  public. 
When  th£  more  intelligent  of  George's  friends 
learned  that  he  was  serious  in  his  intention 
of  attempting  to  overthrow  Spencer's  evolu- 
tionary theories  they  were  aghast.  One  of 
the  most  anxious  of  these,  Dr.  Taylor,  advised 


HENRY    GEORGE  43 

him  to  "leave  any  review  of  the  Spencerian 
system  of  philosophy  to  those  who  are  in  that 
special  field  and  who  have  special  training  for 
such  work.  In  your  own  particular  field  I  am 
satisfied  you  are  invincible;  but  I  should  not 
feel  so  sure  of  you  in  metaphysics,  philosophy 
or  cosmogony.  Remember  that  life  is  short 
and  the  powers  of  the  human  mind  limited.,, 

This  excellent  advice  fell  on  stony  ground 
and  George  proceeded  to  give  the  world  an 
exhibition  of  the  limited  powers  of  the  human 
mind  which  has  few  parallels  in  the  contro- 
versial literature  of  science  and  philosophy. 
Here  more  than  elsewhere  George  vindicated 
the  opinion  Marx  had  expressed  of  him :  "The 
man  is  a  back  number."  But  fools  must  needs 
rush  in,  and  wherever  George  touched  modern 
science  he  displayed  the  intellectual  acumen 
of  a  Salvation  Army  Adjutant. 

Thirty-three  years  after  the  publication  of 
the  "Origin  of  Species,"  when  every  man  who 
knew  anything  at  all  about  it,  had  accepted 
Darwinism,  George  wrote  with  great  candor 
and  simplicity:  "I  simply  don't  see  evolution 
from  the  animal  as  the  form  in  which  man 
has  come."  And  this  was  the  man  who  felt 
called  upon  by  destiny  to  reconstruct  human 
thinking  on  a  newer  and  sounder  foundation. 

When  Professor  Huxley  criticised  his  revi- 


44  TEN   BLIND  LEADERS   OP   THE   BLIND 

val  of  the  exploded  eighteenth  century  doc- 
trine of  "Natural  Rights,"  George  wrote  to 
Taylor:  "What  do  you  think  of  him  as  a 
philosopher?  I  am  itching  to  get  at  him,  and 
will  as  soon  as  I  get  a  little  leisure."  This 
raises  in  the  mind  the  picture  of  a  foolish 
goat  "itching"  to  butt  its  thick  skull  against  a 
stone  wall. 

When  Lamarck  attempted  to  explain  the 
processes  of  biological  evolution,  he  vaguely 
hinted  at  a  factor  which  his  admirers  in  gen- 
eral, and  his  biographer,  Packard,  in  particu- 
lar, have  always  been  eager  to  separate  from 
his  great  work.  This  was  expressed  by 
Lamarck  in  the  word  "besoin,"  about  the  exact 
meaning  of  which  there  has  been  some  rather 
warm  controversy.  What  it  would  appear  to 
mean  in  Lamarck's  usage  of  it  is  "desire" 
and  his  idea  seems  to  have  been  that  animals 
acquired  new  organs  because  they  willed  or 
wished  or  "desired"  to  have  them.  This  ab- 
surdity biology  has  destroyed.  But  the  unsus- 
pecting Schopenhauer  made  it  the  foundation  of 
his  "World  as  the  Will  and  Idea,"  and  George, 
looking  for  a  heavy  weapon  against  Spencer, 
seized  this  theory  about  the  merits  of  which 
he  had  no  shadow  of  knowledge. 

When  George  replied  to  the  Pope's  encylcli- 
cal,  he  labored  at  length  to  find  favor  for  his 


HENRY    GEORGE  45 

ideas  by  showing  that  they  had  nothing  in 
common  with  Socialism.  He  pointed  out  that 
Socialism  "ignores  the  individual  nature  of 
man,"  seeks  the  undue  extension  of  govern- 
mental powers,  and  the  usual  catalogue  of 
objections  one  hears  in  a  street  car  and  which 
for  lack  of  a  better  name  may  be  called  "street- 
car objections  to  Socialism." 

To-day  the  Single  Tax  camp  splits  into  two 
wings,  which  drift  off  one  to  Anarchism  and 
the  other  to  Socialism.  Those  who  have  been 
saturated  by  its  utopianism  and  are  attracted 
by  illustrations  from  primitive  society,  such  as 
the  savage  catching  fish  with  his  naked  hand, 
become  Anarchists.  Those  who  are  attracted 
to  George  by  his  dissertations  against  poverty 
become  Socialists. 

The  one  great  truth  which  George  saw  and 
which  he  made  it  his  life  work  to  explain — 
and,  alas !  signally  failed — is  that  expressed  in 
the  title  of  his  "Progress  and  Poverty." 

This  is,  that  modern  civilization  brings,  in 
the  trail  of  increasing  wealth,  a  relatively  in- 
creasing amount  of  poverty.  This  Marx 
showed  to  be  due  to  the  diminishing  share 
which  the  wage  laborer  receives,  as  compared 
with  the  increased  productivity  of  his  labor. 

But,  as  a  moment's  reflection  clearly  shows, 
this  increased  productivity  is  due,  not  to  land, 


46  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OP  THE   BLIND 

but  the  development  of  machinery.  Thus  the 
solution  of  this  problem  must  be  sought  in  the 
analysis  of  machine  industry.  This  is  what 
Socialism  does,  and  this  is  why  Socialism  suc- 
ceeds where  Single  Tax  has  so  miserably 
failed. 

The  coming  social  revolution,  peaceful  or 
otherwise,  as  the  ruling  class  may  determine, 
will  be  fought  around  the  machine — it  wilt 
have  the  machine  for  its  storm-center.  The 
question  is,  not  shall  we  put  all  taxes  on  land, 
but  shall  the  "fairy-like"  powers  of  modern 
production  enrich  all  society  or  only  a  few  of 
its  parasitic  members?  Its  battle-cry  will  be — 
the  ownership  by  those  who  produce  of  the 
means  and  machinery  of  social  production. 
Only  by  such  a  change  shall  we  ever  reach  a 
social  order  where  "the  slave  shall  cease,  and 
the  master  of  slaves  shall  cease." 


III. 

Immanuel  Kant. 

The  history  of  philosophy  records  a  series 
of  defeats,  resulting  in  final  and' complete  dis- 
aster. Twenty  centuries  of  herculean  labors, 
performed  by  the  greatest  intellects  the  race 
produced*  during  that  period,  and  philosophy 
ends  where  philosophy  began — the  will-o'-the- 
wisp  it  pursues  is  as  far  beyond  the  reach  of 
Kant  as  it  was  of  Plato. 

Round  and  round  it  moves  in  a  fatal  circle 
from  which  there  is  no  exit.  It  builds  its 
imposing  temples  on  foundations  of  sand,  and 
no  sooner  is  the  capstone  planted  in  triumph 
than   the   entire    superstructive  falls  into  ruin. 

Philosophy,  never  daunted,  rolls  her  Sisy- 
phus stone  to  the  very  summit  of  the  moun- 
tain and  then,  when  victory  seems  assured, 
back  it  tumbles  to  the  starting  point. 

Her  aims  are  lofty;  her  head  is  among  the 
clouds;  she  despises  science,  which  grovels 
among  sordid  facts,  but  science,  content  to 
investigate  that  which  has  been  gathered  from 
experience,  and  which  can  be  verified  by  obser- 
vation and  experiment,  moves   forward  in  a 

47 


48*   TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

line,  not  always  straight,  but  forever  advanc- 
ing. 

To-day  systematic,  speculative  philosophy  is 
abandoned  and  science  holds  the  field  triumph- 
ant and  unchallenged.  Science  has  succeeded 
in  the  search  for  truth  where  philosophy  failed. 
Where  philosophy  o'erstretched  the  chasm 
with  a  rainbow,  science  spanned  it  with  a  steel 
bridge.  Philosophers  have  piled  speculation 
on  speculation,  they  have  erected  system  after 
system,  every  system  claiming  to  give  the  sum 
total  of  human  knowledge,  and  yet  they  are 
no  nearer  an  agreement  on  first  principles  than 
were  the  philosophers  of  ancient  Greece.  The 
cry,  "Back  to  Kant,"  has  no  more  relevance 
than  back  to  Paracelsus,  or,  back  to  Plato. 
In  fact,  philosophy  always  gets  "back"  to 
where  it  starts  from  without  being  urged. 

Science,  on  the  other  hand,  moves  on  from 
one  conquest  to  another,  refusing  to  accept 
that  which  cannot  be  tested,  wasting  no  time 
in  idle  speculation  on  matters  beyond  verifica- 
tion, she  achieves  more  in  ten  years  than  phi- 
losophy has  to  show  for  two  thousand. 

When  philosophy  rejected  the  only  sure 
ground  of  knowledge — -experience  —  it  con- 
demned itself  to  perpetual  sterility.  Joseph 
Dietzgen  says:  "After  the  repeated  creation 
of  giant  fantasmagorias,  it  found  its  solution 


IMMANUEL  KANT  49 

in  the  positive  knowledge  that  so-called  pure 
philosophical  thought,  from  which  all  concrete 
contents  have  been  abstracted,  is  nothing  but 
thoughtless  thought,  without  any  real  object 
back  of  it." 

So  thoroughly  discredited  had  mere  specula- 
tion become  by  the  middle  of  the  last  century 
that  Ludwig  Feuerbach  boasted:  "My  phi- 
losophy is  no  philosophy." 

If,  however,  posterity  should  forget  the  pon- 
derous labors  of  the  philosophers  the  name  of 
Emanuel  Kant  will  still  be  entitled  to  a  fore- 
most place  among  the  thinkers  of  the  world. 

In  1755,  long  before  he  constructed  his  sys- 
tem of  philosophy,  he  published  a  book  of 
two  hundred  pages,  which  deserves  a  place  by 
Newton's  "Principia"  and  Darwin's  "Origin 
of  Species,"  a  book  which  will  more  and  more 
in  the  future  constitute  Kant's  chief  claim  to 
live  in  the  memories  of  men.  It  was  entitled 
"A  General  Theory  of  the  Heavens,"  etc.,  and 
gave  to  the  world  the  famous  theory  of  "nebu- 
lae," which  has  done  more  to  emancipate 
astronomy  from  theology  than  even  the  epoch- 
making  discoveries  of  Newton  himself. 

This  epoch-making  theory  is  too  often  as- 
cribed to  Laplace,  who  did  not  publish  his 
"Systeme  du  Monde"  until  forty-one  years 
later,  in  1796.    It  is  conceded  that  Laplace  dis- 


50  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE   BLIND 

covered  the  theory  independently,  although 
subsequently,  as  Kant's  book  seemed  to  go 
straight  to  oblivion,  when  it  was  published. 

Born  in  Konigsberg,  son  of  a  saddler,  in 
1724,  he  lived  there  eighty  years,  never  leaving 
it  further  than  a  walk  into  the  country.  Twice 
he  contemplated  marriage,  but  in  the  first  in- 
stance he  reflected  so  long,  the  lady  married 
another,  while  by  the  time  he  made  up  his 
mind  in  the  second  case,  the  object  of  his  con- 
sideration had  left  town. 

After  nine  years  as  private  tutor  to  various 
families,  he  began  to  win  recognition,  and  after 
fifteen  years  as  "Privat-Docent"  he  obtained 
the  professorship  he  desired,  the  Chair  of*. 
Logic  and  Metaphysics.  He  set  himself  as  his 
life  task  the  solution  of  the  world-old  prob- 
lems of  philosophy.  Undeterred  by  the  fate 
of  his  predecessors,  he  believed  it  possible  to 
succeed  where  they  had  failed.  He  believed 
he  had  discovered  a  new  method,  an  open 
sesame  to  the  hitherto  insoluble  mysteries  of 
the  universe. 

Above  all,  his  philosophy  was  to  be  critical 
—"The  Critical  Philosophy."  This  criticism 
was  to  be  aimed  at  the  very  organ  of  knowl- 
edge itself — the  faculty  of  reason.  Like  all 
other  philosophers,  Kant  believed  he  had 
blazed  out  a  new  path,  destined  to  lead  to  the 


IMMANUEL.    KANT  51 

promised  land  of  certitude.     In  this,  however, 
Kant  deceived  himself. 

He  published  his  celebrated  book,  "A  Cri- 
tique of  Pure  Reason,"  which  contained  the 
first  half  of  his  philosophy.  It  was  an  exam- 
ination of  the  powers  and  limitations  of  rea- 
son and  the  sense  perceptions.  This  book 
made  a  great  stir  in  Germany  in  spite  of  its 
clumsy  and  difficult  terminology. 

The  main  position  established  in  the  "Cri- 
tique of  Pure  Reason"  is  that  the  understand- 
ing is  not  capable  of  perceiving  things  as  they 
really  are,  but  only  as  they  appear  to  be.  What 
we  behold  is  the  "phenomena,"  behind  that, 
and  wholly  invisible  and  imperceptible  to  us, 
there  is  the  "noumena"  or  "things  in  them- 
selves"— the  things  as  they  are  in  reality.  So 
far  Kant  lands  in  complete  skepticism. 

Hume  had  landed  in  skepticism,  because  he 
held  that  the  understanding  was  treacherous 
and  its  conclusions  could  not  be  relied  on; 
therefore,  philosophy  and  religion  became  alike 
impossible.  What  appeared  to  be  the  same 
result  was  reached  by  Kant,  asserting  as  he 
did,  not  that  the  understanding  was  too  treach- 
erous to  be  trusted,  but  that  it  was  unable 
by  reason  of  its  own  limitations  to  penetrate 
beyond  appearances  and  ascertain  those  cer- 


52  TEN   BLIND  LEADERS   OF   THE   BLIND 

tainties  which  are  essential  to  philosophy  and 
religion  alike. 

It  seemed  as  if  Kant  was  to  give  skepticism 
the  philosophic  status  in  Germany  which 
Hume  had  already  obtained  for  it  in  Britain. 
The  "powers  that  be"  were  hardly  disposed 
to  accept  this  without  protest.  The  censor 
allowed  the  book  to  pass  on  the  ground  that 
it  would  "only  be  read  by  deep  thinkers."  It 
is  said  that  Frederick  II  protested  and  was 
assured  by  Kant  that  his  fears  were  ground- 
less, that  he  intended  to  give  religion  a  new 
foundation  and  would  defend  the  existing 
order. 

The  manner  in  which  he  accomplished  this 
is  seen  in  his  "Critique  of  Practical  Reason," 
which  presented  the  second  and  supplementary 
half  of  his  philosophy.  In  this  work  the  skep- 
ticism of  the  former  volume  is  totally  annihi- 
lated. It  is  accomplished  thus :  We  must  not 
despair  of  ever  knowing  the  eternal  verities, 
because  this  knowledge  cannot  be  obtained  by 
means  of  the  understanding.  We  are,  as 
human  beings,  equipped  with  a  power  of  ascer- 
taining truth  wholly  independent  of  reason  or 
experience.  By  this  means  we  are  able  to 
place  great  truths  which  have  hitherto  been 
disputed  upon  a  solid  foundation,  which  will 
render  them  impervious  to  all  future  criticism. 


IMMANUBL  KANT  53 

Thus  Kant  raised  the  question  of  questions : 
Have  we  any  ideas  that  are  independent  of 
experience?  Again  he  fought  upon  a  battle- 
ground which  had  always  proved  philosophy's 
field  of  Waterloo. 

The  hopeless  futility  of  Kant's  philosophy 
came  out  clearly  in  his  "Practical  Reason." 
His  great  "Critical  Philosophy"  turned  out  to 
be  a  re-hash  of  theories  which  even  in  his  day 
were  beginning  to  be  discredited,  and  which 
were  destined  a  century  later  to  be  pulverized 
to  powder  by  positive  science  and  the  Socialist 
philosophy. 

In  the  previous  century  John  Locke  in  his 
"Essay  Concerning  the  Human  Understand- 
ing" had  anticipated  the  conclusion  of  nine- 
teenth century  science  that  all  our  ideas  are 
the  result  of  experience.  This,  however,  Kant 
stoutly  disputed,  as  he  must  needs  do,  his 
whole  philosophy  being  directly  at  stake. 

According  to  Kant,  there  are  two  sources  of 
knowledge.  Karjt  himself  denied  this  and  tried 
to  show  that  according  to  his  own  teaching 
there  is  only  really  one.  He  maintains  that 
water  cannot  be  said  to  have  two  sources, 
because  it  is  composed  of  oxygen  and  hydro- 
gen. Water,  according  to  Kant,  is  not  caused 
by  oxygen  and  hydrogen — two  things,  but  by 
the  "union"  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen,  which  is 


54  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

one  thing.  This  kind  of  word-juggling  was 
a  large  part  of  the  stock  in  trade  of  the  phi- 
losophers, and  went  far  to  bring  discredit  on 
their  fanciful  conclusions.  In  spite  of  his  efforts 
to  give  it  an  appearance  of  unity — monism — 
to  which  it  is  by  no  means  entitled,  he  falls 
into  the  most  flagrant  dualism. 

He  acknowledges  that  we  have  ideas  drawn 
from  experience — a  posteriori.  These  ideas, 
he  thinks,  are  to  be  trusted,  Hume  to  the  con- 
trary notwithstanding.  But  the  trouble  is, 
these  ideas  are  so  limited  —  they  teach  us  so 
little. 

This  painful  and  humiliating  limitation  of 
reason  dependent  on  experience  is  remedied 
by  Kant's  discovery  of  an  infallible  source  of 
truth  separate  from  and  independent  of  all 
experience.  This  he  finds  in  human  conscious- 
ness. As  this  is  of  supreme  importance,  Kant 
now  undertakes  to  show  that  we  possess  many 
great  truths  which  we  cannot  by  any  possi- 
bility derive  from  experience,  but  which  we 
must,  nevertheless,  accept  because  they  are 
bound  up  with  the  very  nature  of  our  being, 
ingrained  in  the  laws  of  our  mind,  an  integral 
part  of  our  very  consciousness. 

As  we  might  expect,  these  truths  derived 
from  consciousness  are  necessary  and  univer- 
sal.    If  we  wish  to  know  what  they  are  we 


IMMANUEL,   KANT  55 

must  interrogate  our  own  consciousness,  much 
as  though  a  man  who  wished  to  know  the 
name  of  a  street  which  he  had  never  heard 
mentioned,  nor  seen  in  writing,  instead  of  ask- 
ing someone  or  consulting  a  map  or  some  out- 
side source  of  information,  should  shut  him- 
self up  in  a  room  and  try  to  get  it  by  cudgell- 
ing his  brains. 

We  know  that  such  an  adventure  could 
never  succeed.  The  human  consciousness  can 
only  give  up  what  has  previously  been  com- 
mitted to  it,  and  the  effort  to  draw  out  from 
it  anything  else  must  be  as  unavailing  as 
though  we  asked  the  memory  for  a  line  of 
poetry  which  it  never  possessed.  This  criti- 
cism is  destructive  of  Kant's  whole  philosophy, 
as  we  shall  see. 

He  says:  "How  far  we  can  advance  inde- 
pendently of  all  experience  *  *  *  is  shown  by 
the  brilliant  example  of  mathematics." 

Kant's  idea  is  that  the  mathematical  truth 
that  two  and  two  make  four  is  not  derived 
by  experience,  but  is  one  of  those  necessary, 
universal,  unconditional  truths  which  are  at 
once  clear  to  all  because  they  are  founded  in 
the  human  consciousness  itself.  This  seems 
plausible  enough  until  it  is  examined  more 
closely.  It  is  true  that  when  asked  to  give 
the  total  of  two  and  two  the  response  of  con- 


56  TEN   BLIND  LEADERS   OF   THE   BLIND 

sciousness  is  instantaneous.  But  is  this  because 
the  truth  is  necessarily  universal  and  uncondi- 
tional, or  is  it  because  the  sum  is  so  simple 
and  we  have  been  over  it  so  often  by  "experi- 
ence." If  the  former  is  the  case,  as  Kant  con- 
tends, how  is  it  that  when  the  average  man 
is  asked  to  give  the  total  of  twice  two  hundred 
and  eighty-three  his  "consciousness"  does  not 
respond  with  quite  the  same  alacrity?  That 
the  result  of  this  addition  is  five  hundred  and 
sixty-six  is  just  as  necessary,  universal  and 
unconditional  as  that  twice  two  are  four. 

But  when  the  average  man  is  confronted 
with  the  more  complex  sum,  instead  of  find- 
ing the  answer  waiting  in  his  consciousness, 
he  is  obliged  to  revert  in  his  mind  to  certain 
rules  which  he  learned  at  school  by  the  most 
toilsome  kind  of  "experience."  Even  the  sim- 
pler sum  is  insoluble  to  the  consciousness  of 
the  child  that  has  not  learned  the  relation  of 
numbers.  True,  children  learn  to  count  rap- 
idly, but  only  by  "experience."  They  are  quick 
to  perceive  that  the  ability  to  count  is  neces- 
sary to  the  preservation,  intact,  of  certain  pre- 
cious properties,  and  when  a  certain  stage  of 
proficiency  has  been  reached,  it  is  surprising 
how  great  an  outburst  may  be  brought  on  by 
the  insidious  abstraction  of  one  or  two  ginger- 
bread cakes. 


IMMANUEL   KANT  57 

It  is  worthy  of  note,  that  when  Alfred  Rus- 
sell Wallace  wished  to  find  an  unoccupied 
area  in  Darwinism,  where  the  ghosts  of  spir- 
itualism might  live  and  move  and  have  their 
being  undisturbed  by  "Natural  Selection,"  he 
sought  the  same  refuge  as  Kant — mathemat- 
ics. He  too  maintained  that  the  mathematical 
faculty  could  not  be  accounted  for  on  purely 
rational  grounds,  and  as  Kant  had  ascribed  it 
to  a  metaphysical  (beyond-physical)  source, 
he  declared  it  to  be  an  "influx"  from  the  spirit- 
world.  At  bottom,  Kant  and  Wallace  are  at 
one ;  they  are  both  seeking  to  protect  the  fun- 
damental belief  of  the  theology  current  in 
their  time  from  the  encroachment  of  science. 

It  is  quite  clear  that  if  nothing  was  being 
sought  beyond  the  establishment  of  this  non- 
physical  origin  of  the  methematical  faculty, 
neither  Kant  nor  Wallace  would  have  given  it 
a  second  thought.  Wallace  as  co-discoverer 
of  "natural  selection"  had,  so  his  colleagues 
thought,  closed  the  front  door  of  science 
against  belief  in  the  supernatural,  and  he  found 
it  necessary  to  look  for  some  rift  or  crevice  by 
which  it  might  re-enter.  But  Wallace  had  to 
contend  with  a  much  more  formidable  science 
in  the  nineteenth  century  than  had  Kant  in  the 
eighteenth.    In  fact,  he  had  to  show  that  the 


58  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

mathematical  faculty  could  not  be  accounted 
for  by  "natural  selection." 

He  must,  therefore,  prove  that  mathematical 
ability  was  not  a  useful  variation,  leading  itt 
possessor  to  victory  in  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. To  this  end  he  maintained  that  the 
great  mathematical  powers  of  a  senior  wran- 
gler in  an  English  university,  were  so  little  in 
demand,  and  withal  so  rare  as  not  to  consti- 
tute a  material  factor  in  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. As  Professor  Ritchie  pointed  out,  in  this 
controversy,  Wallace  overlooked  the  fact  that 
the  special  powers  of  a  senior  wrangler  are 
invariably  accompanied  by,  and  are  the  result 
of,  a  highly  organized  and  well-trained  brain, 
which  undoubtedly  is  a  very  important  factor 
in  the  struggle  for  existence,  as  it  is  fought 
out  in  modern  society. 

Reduced  to  simpler  and  more  primitive  in- 
stances the  alleged  difficulty  at  once  disap- 
pears. It  does  not  require  great  insight  to  see 
that  an  animal  with  a  family  of  five,  and  pos- 
sessing the  ability  to  count  them  all  and  at 
once  detect  the  loss  of  one,  would  be  much 
more  likely  to  rear  all  her  young  than  another 
animal  with  a  family  of  the  same  number,  but 
unable  to  count  above  three,  and  which,  there- 
fore, would  not  search  for  missing  offspring 
until  more  than  two  were  lost. 


IMMANUEL,   KANT  TO 

In  the  attempt  to  place  mathematics  on  a 
supernatural  footing  Kant  and  Wallace  alike 
completely  failed.  The  only  important  differ- 
ence is  that  in  the  eighteenth  century  when 
Kant  tried  it,  the  thinkers  of  his  day,  still  in 
the  grip  of  metaphysical  philosophy,  received 
the  assertion  with  great  solemnity  and  ac- 
claimed its  propounder  the  greatest  genius  of 
his  age.  Kant  himself  had  the  temerity  to 
compare  his  own  work  in  philosophy  with  that 
of  Copernicus  in  physics.  Had  he  made  this 
claim  for  his  own  work  in  the  same  field  as 
Copernicus  —  his  nebular  theory  —  posterity 
would  have  upheld  the  analogy. 

Instead  of  furthering  the  brilliant  results  of 
his  work  in  physics,  his  work  in  philosophy 
tended  to  undo  them.  In  physics  he  did  much 
to  destroy  the  useless  theology  of  the  middle 
ages,  while  in  philosophy  he  labored  to  re-es- 
tablish it  on  a  better  foundation. 

So  clear  had  the  impossibility  of  this  become 
by  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  that 
a  similar  attempt  on  the  part  of  Wallace  to 
achieve  the  same  object,  provoked  among  his 
contemporaries  a  tolerant  and  pitying  smile. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  subterfuges  by 
which  the  Kantian  "independent"  truths  were 
established  take  this:  "All  men  are  mortal," 
everybody  believes  this,  but  they  do  not  believe 


60  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OP   THE   BLIND 

it  from  "experience,"  because  it  is  quite  clear 
that  we  cannot  know  this  from  "experience" 
so  long  as  any  of  them  are  living.  If  from 
this  general  proposition  we  deduce  the  par- 
ticular statement,  "Thomas  is  mortal,"  before 
we  could  know  from  "experience"  that  this 
statement  is  true  we  should  be  obliged  to  wait 
until  Thomas  died. 

This  ingenuous  reasoning  was  considered 
acute  in  the  eighteenth  century,  but  it  calls  for 
no  extensive  reply  in  the  twentieth. 

The  real  process  by  which  such  conclusions 
are  reached  has  been  laid  bare  by  science ;  not 
by  means  of  criticism  so  much  as  by  con- 
sciously adopting  that  very  method  as  a  means 
of  finding  the  truth.  Science  seeks  to  explain 
the  unknown  by  the  known.  Whether  the 
people  who  are  now  alive  will  all  die  belongs 
to  the  future,  and  is  therefore  unknown.  But 
as  everybody  who  ever  lived  in  the  past  did 
die,  we  argue  from  this  known  fact  of  experi- 
ence that  the  people  now  alive,  being  of  the 
same  species  and  the  same  in  every  other  way, 
so  far  as  this  matter  is  concerned,  will  also 
die.  The  first  and  most  essential  method  of 
modern  science  is  to  proceed  in  this  way  from 
the  particular  facts  to  the  general  law. 

After  a  laborious  but  unsuccessful  effort  to 
prove  the  idea  of  causation  to  be  independent 


IMMANUEL   KANT  61 

of  experience,  like  the  mathematical  faculty, 
he  takes  another  plunge  into  the  depths  of  his 
consciousness,  and  to  the  great  satisfaction  of 
Frederick  II  and  the  public  censor,  he  brings 
up  a  personal  God,  the  freedom  of  the  will,  a 
future  life,  and  that  much-lauded  idea  of  duty, 
to  which  he  gave  the  philosophical  title :  "The 
Categorical  Imperative." 

Although  these  things  are  all  welded  to- 
gether in  the  Kantian  system,  we  shall  here 
confine  ourselves  as  far  as  possible  to  his 
ethics. 

When  Kant  listened  to  his  consciousness  he 
heard  a  voice  saying:  "Thou  shalt!"  Thus 
duty,  besides  belonging  to  a  certain  category, 
was  also  "imperative."  "Thou  shalt"  would 
be  absurd  if  he  were  not  able  to  respond  to 
the  mandate,  from  which  he  concludes  that 
man  has  a  free  will,  a  doctrine  which  biolog- 
ical science  has  completely  exterminated. 

If  Kant  had  possessed  the  cautious  mind  of 
the  present-day  scientist  he  would  have  lis- 
tened to  the  "Thou  shalt"  of  his  conscious- 
ness with  some  considerable  suspicion.  It  may 
have  occurred  to  him  that  the  very  words 
might  be  only  an  echo  of  his  memory,  rem- 
iniscent of  the  days  when  he  sat  at  his  moth- 
er's knee  and  the  ten  "Thou  shalts"  of  the 
decalogue  were  impressed  on  his  mind. 


62  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE   BLIND 

Could  he  have  known  what  modern  anthro- 
pology has  since  revealed,  he  would  have 
known  that  he  would  only  find  in  his  con- 
sciousness, a  jumbled  mass  of  things  put  there 
in  various  ways  during  his  childhood,  boy- 
hood, and  youth. 

When  we  remember  that  Kant  had  spent  six 
years  studying  theology,  and,  had  he  not  been 
disappointed  in  his  application  for  a  certain 
position,  would  probably  have  spent  his  life 
preaching,  we  are  not  surprised  that  the  net 
result  of  the  search  of  his  consciousness  was 
a  collection  of  the  theological  ideas  which 
were  current  in  his  time.  The  very  formula 
in  which  he  states  his  "Categorical  Impera- 
tive" contains  little  more  than  the  golden  rule 
decked  out  in  the  verbal  trappings  of  phi- 
losophy. 

It  reads:  "Act  at  all  times  so  that  the 
maxim  of  thy  action  may  serve  as  the  prin- 
ciple of  a  universal  law."  The  idea  is  that  it 
is  possible  for  all  men  to  be  actuated  by  the 
same  motive  and  act  in  the  same  way.  Eth- 
ical science,  even  without  the  aid  of  Social- 
ism, has  demonstrated  that  there  is  as  yet  no 
such  thing  as  universal  ethics. 

"On  that  theory,"  says  Haeckel,  speaking  of 
Kant's  formula  above  quoted,  "all  normal  men 
would  have  the  same  sense  of  duty."     And  he 


IMMANUEL   KANT  63 

adds:  "Modern  anthropology  has  ruthlessly 
dissipated  that  pretty  dream ;  it  has  shown  that 
conceptions  of  duty  differ  even  more  among 
uncivilized  than  among  civilized  nations.  All 
the  actions' and  customs  which  we  regard  as 
sins  or  loathsome  crimes  (theft,  fraud,  mur- 
der, adultery,  etc.)  are  considered  by  other 
nations  in  certain  circumstances  to  be  virtues, 
or  even  sacred  duties." 

In  the  domain  of  ethics  the  victory  of  Social- 
ism has  been  signal  and  complete.  True  it 
was  anthropology  that  "dissipated  that  pretty 
dream"  of  the  theological  and  intuitional  eth- 
icists,  but  it  was  left  for  the  Socialist  philoso- 
phy to  explain  "why"  men  had  different  eth- 
ical codes  in  different  countries  and  different 
historical  epochs. 

It  was  not  Lubbock  or  Tylor  or  Spencer, 
but  Marx,  who  proclaimed  the  economic  and 
social  origin  of  all  moral  beliefs  and  ethical 
codes.  Every  new  economic  system'  brings 
with  it  new  problems  and  as  it  develops,  its 
social  processes  impress  themselves  on  the 
consciousness  of  those  living  within  it.  These 
problems  call  for  new  ethical  concepts  and  the 
moral  codes  of  a  past  epoch  will  not  serve. 

The  problems  that  confront  modern  society 
are  not  those  which  faced  the  Syrian  village 
of  two  thousand  years  ago,  and  the  ethics  that 


64  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

sprang  out  of  the  social  life  of  the  Syrian  vil- 
lage will  not  meet  the  social  needs  of  the 
twentieth  century.  Quite  as  useless  to-day  are 
the  Kantian  Intuitional  ethics,  which  repro- 
duce medieval  theology,  with  some  bourgeois 
modifications. 

The  ethics  of  modern  Socialism  are  not 
taken  either  from  the  preserved  literature  of 
ancient  peoples,  or  the  befuddled  conscious- 
ness of  eighteenth  century  philosophers;  they 
have  their  roots  in  the  world  of  economic  real- 
ity. They  grow  out  of  the  present  needs  of 
an  exploited  working  class.  The  formula  of 
their  imperative  reads:  "Act  so  that  all  thy 
deeds  shall  redound  to  the  emancipation  of 
the  class  that  labors,  and  the  furtherance  of 
the  evolutionary  process  which  gave  it  birth 
and  which  at  this  moment  urges  it  on  to  cer- 
tain victory," 


IV. 
Prof.  Richard  T.  Ely. 

Prof.  Ely  is  a  fair  opponent  and  his  treat- 
ment of  Socialism  has  done  much  to  obtain  a 
hearing  for  it  among  the  unreasonable.  When 
Bismarck  suppressed  the  writings  of  Social- 
ists in  Germany  by  means  of  his  famous  "ex- 
ceptional laws,"  the  Social  Democrats  pub- 
lished a  half  million  cheap  edition  of  a  book  by 
a  critic  of  Socialism  —  "The  Quintessence  of 
Socialism,"  by  Albert  Schaffle.  In  any  sim- 
ilar circumstances  in  this  country,  Ely's  book, 
"The  Strength  and  Weakness  of  Socialism/* 
or  at  least  many  of  its  chapters,  would  be 
admirably  adapted  to  meet  the  emergency. 

The  chapter  on  "Alleged  Objections  to 
Socialism,"  while  defending  things  Socialistic 
rather  than  Socialism,  would,  as  a  propaganda 
pamphlet,  compare  very  favorably  with  many 
of  the  productions  of  our  own  pamphleteers. 

He  opens  the  second  paragraph  of  this  chap- 
ter thus :  "It  may  first  of  all  be  well  to  give 
some  little  attention  to  the  arguments  against 
Socialism  which  cannot  be  regarded  as  valid. 
Of  course,  it    would    require    a    book    much 

65 


66  TEN   BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE   BLIND 

longer  than  the  present  work  to  take  up  one 
after  another  all  these  fallacious  and  mislead- 
ing arguments.,, 

He  points  out  that  an  argument  which 
seems  to  have  force  against  Socialism  in  one 
country  has  just  the  opposite  effect  in  another, 
and  he  gives  several  cases  in  point. 

He  says : 

"German  writers,  and  until  recently  Eng- 
lish writers,  have  regarded  the  proposal  of  the 
Socialists  to  abolish  tuition  fees  as  decidedly 
objectionable.  There  may  be  differences  of 
opinion  among  Americans,  but  undoubtedly  a 
vast  majority  of  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States  give  to  free  schools  their  cordial  in- 
dorsement, regard  them  as  one  of  the  bul- 
warks of  the  republic,  and  attack  vigorously 
any  one  who  attempt  to  undermine  them." 

He  then  cites  a  case  in  which  it  is  the 
American  who  lags  behind  the  European: 
"The  idea  of  public  ownership  and  manage- 
ment of  railways  is  regarded  by  many  Ameri- 
cans as  the  chief  weakness  in  the  program  of 
Socialism,  while  Germans,  as  a  rule,  regard 
such  ownership  and  management  as  some- 
thing desirable.  They  tell  us  that  the  test  of 
experience  has  settled  the  question  for  them." 

Then,  again,  in  Germany  one  of  the  widely 
current  objections  to  Socialism  is  that  in  a 


PROF.    RICHARD    T.    ELY  67 

Socialist  society  every  one  would  have  to  black 
his  own  shoes.  Even  if  this  were  granted,  it 
would  have  small  weight  with  an  American, 
who  cannot  see  how  the  blacking  of  one's 
own  shoes  would  interfere  with  his  intellect- 
ual development  or  in  any  way  lower  his  char- 
acter. 

When  an  Englishman  told  Lincoln  that  in 
England  no  gentleman  blacked  his  own  boots, 
Lincoln  asked,  "Whose  boots  does  he  black, 
then?" 

Ely  shows  very  clearly  that  Socialism  is  in 
no  way  responsible  for  those  colonies,  the 
failure  of  which  has  often  been  urged  against 
it  by  those  who  were  ready  to  use  any  argu- 
ment without  regard  to  its  merit. 

He    argues    that    communistic    experiments 
grow  out  of  production  on  a  small  scale,  and  I 
that  "when  production  is  carried  on,  on  a  vast 
national  and  international  scale,  the  Socialism 
proposed  must  be  national  and  international." 

He  says  that  Socialists  discountenance  "pro- 
posals to  establish  Utopian  communities,  and 
have  never  seen  reason  to  alter  their  opinion. 
Modern  Socialism  does  not  preach  a  doctrine 
of  separation,  but  aims  to  change  the  whole 
structure  of  modern  society." 

In  the  appendix  he  gives  Socialism  credit 


68  TEN   BLIND  LEADERS   OF   THE   BLIND 

for  having  diverted  attention  from  mere  effects 
to  a  consideration  of  causes.   ' 

"It  is  doubtless/'  he  says,  "as  a  result  in 
part  of  Socialistic  criticism  that  we  are  less 
inclined  than  formerly  to  boast  of  large  sums 
given  in  alms,  or  of  the  provision  made  for 
the  relief  of  distress.  We  are  now  more  in- 
clined to  inquire  whether  or  not  this  need  for 
alms  and  asylums  could  not  have  been  in  large 
measure  obviated.  We  admit  that  it  is  all 
very  well  to  furnish  wooden  limbs  to  those 
who  have  lost  their  arms  and  legs  in  the  rail- 
way service,  but  we  think  it  is  far  better  to 
enforce  upon  railways  those  well-known  meas- 
ures which  will  prevent  accidents  to  railway 
employes." 

As  Ely  moves  from  the  Socialism  of  Sidney 
Webb  and  the  Fabian  Society  toward  Marx 
and  the  revolutionary  Social  Democracy, 
praise  dwindles  and  criticism  begins. 

One  thing,  however,  he  has  in  common  with 
all  the  later  critics  of  Socialism — a  profound 
respect  for  the  capacity  of  its  chief  exponents, 
Marx  and  Engels. 

"Karl  Marx/'  says  Ely,  "is  recognized  by 
friend  and  foe  as  one  of  the  most  learned  and 
gifted  economic  thinkers  of  the  present  cen- 
tury; Friedrich  Engels  is  one  with  whom  eco- 
nomic philosophy  must  deal,   and   it  is   said, 


PROF.    RICHARD    T.    ELY  69 

besides,  that  he  has  been  more  than  ordinarily 
successful  in  business." 

Engels'  ability  to  make  money  has  always 
appealed  very  powerfully  to  his  bourgeois 
critics,  making  them  hesitate  to  call  him  a 
mere  dreamer. 

Again:  "The  chief  writer  of  modern  So- 
cialism is  unquestionably  Karl  Marx.  .  .  , 
Karl  Marx  is  regarded,  even  by  many  who  are 
not  Socialists,  as  one  of  the  greatest  thinkers 
of  the  century,  and  few  others  have  influenced 
the  development  of  economic  thought  as  he 
has." 

The  professor  also  perceives  what  their 
achievement  consisted  of,  for  he  observes :  "It 
is  recognized  that  Marx  and  Engels  have  put 
Socialism  on  a  scientific  basis." 

Alas,  it  is  just  this  "scientific"  Socialism 
which  lands  the  professor  in  hopeless  confu- 
sion and  proves  his  undoing.  After  having 
warned  his  readers  against  the  confusion  which 
Christian  Socialism  leads  to,  he  falls  into  the 
very  blunder  which  constitutes  the  Christian 
Socialist's  main  argument. 

On  Christian  Socialism  he  delivers  himself 
thus: 

"Sometimes  Christian  Socialism  means  So- 
cialism with  a  protest  against  the  materialism 
which  the  Marxists  have  most  unfortunately 


70  TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OP   THE    BLIND 

associated  with  Socialism.  It  may  also  have 
reference  to  methods  of  agitation,  and  mean 
that  only  those  methods  will  meet  with  ap- 
proval which  are  compatible  with  Christian 
ethics.  Christian  Socialism  would  thus  imply 
a  protest  against  violent  measures.  But  as 
Socialists  have  generally  renounced  anything 
but  peaceful,  legal  and  constitutional  methods, 
Christian  Socialism  as  thus  used  would  not 
carry  with  it  anything  very  distinctive.  It 
would  seem,  perhaps,  best  to  drop  the  use  of 
the  expression  Christian  Socialism  as  some- 
thing which  leads  to  confusion  rather  than  to 
clearness  of  thought/' 

The  real  point  of  difference  between  Chris- 
tian Socialism  and  Marxian  Socialism  com- 
pletely escapes  him,  so  completely,  in  fact, 
that  his  own  definition  of  Scientific  Socialism 
is  in  reality  a  statement  of  the  Utopian  posi- 
tion of  the  Christian  Socialist. 

Here  is  the  definition: 

"The  word  Socialism,  as  generally  em- 
ployed, has  a  far  narrower  meaning  than  So- 
cialism in  the  broad  sense  already  described. 
It  calls  to  mind  an  industrial  society  which,  in 
its  main  features,  is  sufficiently  clear  and  pre- 
cise. It  is  not  a  theory  which  embraces  all 
departments  of  social  activity,  but  is  confined 
to  the  economic  department,  dealing  with  oth- 


PROF.    RICHARD    T.    ELY  «ft 

crs  simply  as  connected  with  this  and  influ- 
enced by  it.  This  Socialism  is  frequently  des- 
ignated as  'scientific  Socialism.' " 

The  Socialism  of  Marx — which  is  really  sci- 
entific Socialism — is  just  what  Ely  cannot  en- 
dure. His  lamentations  are  loud  and  contin- 
uous. 

"Socialism  in  England  and  America,,,  he 
maintains,  "can  be  appreciated  in  its  full 
strength  only  when  it  becomes  entirely  eman- 
cipated from  the  materialistic  conception  of 
history  advanced  by  Karl  Marx,  for  in  neither 
country  can  Socialism  meet  with  favor  when 
it  puts  its  basis  in  materialism." 

Again:  "Unfortunately  his  (Marx's)  fol- 
lowers in  Germany  and  other  countries  have 
not  yet  been  able  to  emancipate  themselves 
from  his  materialistic  conception  of  history, 
as  a  natural  evolution  determined  by  eco- 
nomic conditions." 

And  again :  "Socialism,  to  the  strict  Marx- 
ist, means  a  conception  of  religion,  of  litera- 
ture and  of  science,  as  well  as  an  economic 
philosophy.  It  is  thus  that  Socialism  in  coun- 
tries like  Germany  has  raised  needless  antag- 
onism because  it  has  seemed  to  be  opposed  to 
Christianity  and  to  many  received  institutions 
which  have  no  necessary  connection  with  in- 
dustry," 


79  TEN   BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

If  the  professor  is  correct,  and  these  institu- 
tions "have  no  necessary  connection  with  in- 
dustry," the  case  for  scientific  Socialism  is 
gone  and  the  materialistic  conception  of  his- 
tory is  a  delusion. 

Ely's  regret  that  the  followers  of  Marx 
"have  not  yet  been  able  to  emancipate  them- 
selves from  his  materialistic  conception  of  his- 
tory," is  another  way  of  saying  that  now,  when 
Marx  and  Engels  have  placed  Socialism  on  a 
scientific  basis,  their  followers  ought  to  throw 
it  back  to  the  Utopian  stage.  Ely's  favorite 
Socialist  author  is  Bellamy,  and  lengthy  pass- 
ages are  cited  from  "Looking  Backward"  in 
proof  of  the  "moral"  strength  of  Socialism — 
Bellamy's  Socialism,  the  Socialism  which  Ely 
really  admires.  Marxian  Socialism  is  woefully 
deficient  in  this  matter  of  ethics.     He  says: 

"While  a  non-ethical  system  of  Socialism, 
based  on  a  materialistic  conception  of  his- 
tory, has  most  unfortunately  for  Socialism 
found  favor  on  the  part  of  a  large  faction  of 
Socialists,  Socialism  has  probably  found  its 
main  strength  on  its  ethical  side." 

When  we  turn  to  his  chapter  on  "The  Prog- 
ress of  Socialism,"  we  find  him  calmly  using 
that  deplorable  Marxian  theory  which  he  has 
been  at  such  great  pains  to  disclaim. 

If  a  Marxian  Socialist  had  written  this  chap- 


PROP.    RICHARD    T.    ELY  73 

ter,  using  the  historical  materialism  of  Marx 
as  the  principle  of  interpretation,  he  would,  of 
course,  have  explained  the  vigorous  condition 
of  Socialism  in  some  countries  as  being  due 
to  those  countries  having  reached  an  advanced 
stage  of  capitalist  production,  giving  those 
material  conditions  from  which,  according  to 
Marx,  the  Socialist  idea  develops.  The  absence 
of  those  material  conditions  in  other  countries 
would,  of  course,  explain  the  backwardness 
of  the  Socialist  movement  there. 

Now  we  will  listen  to  Ely's  explanation: 

"Of  the  Scandinavian  countries,  Denmark 
and  Sweden  alone  have  displayed  any  consid- 
erable Socialistic  activity,  although  Socialism 
has  made  some  little  progress  in  Norway, 
where,  however,  the  backward  industrial  con- 
dition has  been  unfavorable  to  its  growth." 

And  so  Ely  discovers  that  the  development 
and  spread  of  an  "idea"  in  Norway  was 
checked  by  such  "material"  factors  as  "back- 
ward industrial  conditions." ' 

Ely  also  recognizes  that  material  factor 
called  race  and  which  is  an  integral  part  of 
the  Marxian  conception.     He  says: 

"Socialism  is  known  and  is  working  else- 
where in  Europe,  but  has  not  become  a  great 
force.  The  countries  to  which  reference  is 
made  are  those  in  the  southern  part  of  Europe, 


74  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE  BLIND 

which  arc  more  or  less  Asiatic  in  their  charac- 
teristics, and  in  which  the  industrial  develop- 
ment has  been  slow." 

So  dependent  does  Ely  become  on  the  mate- 
rialist conception  of  history,  that  when  he 
comes  to  Switzerland  and  forgets  how  to  ap- 
ply it  he  is  obliged  to  begin  guessing : 

"Switzerland  has  been  the  home  of  foreign 
agitation  and  Socialists  from  all  parts  of  the 
world ;  and  yet  pure  Socialism,  while  it  doubt- 
less has  its  adherents,  has  never  become  a 
prominent  political  factor." 

As  to  why  this  is  so,  he  begins  to  tell  us 
what  "seems"  to  be  the  reason — and  his  con- 
jectures are  very  trivial. 

While  it  had  not  become  quite  clear  when 
Ely  wrote  his  book,  it  is  well  known  that 
Socialism  has  not  developed  in  Switzerland 
because  when  the  ruling  class  discovered  its 
desirability  as  a  pleasure  resort,  they  perma- 
nently arrested  its  industrial  development  by 
turning  it  into  one  huge  hotel. 

After  this  one  failure,  however,  he  comes 
back  to  Marx  again  and  sums  up  with  the 
confidence  of  a  man  who  feels  the  solid  ground 
beneath  his  feet: 

"We  may  say  that  Socialism  is  known  wher- 
ever modern  industrial  civilization  exists.  It 
is  one  expression  of  this  industrial  civiliza- 
tion/' 


PROF.    RICHARD    T.    BLT  75 

This  is  as  if  he  said : 

I  don't  believe  in  the  struggle  for  existence, 
but  everybody  knows  the  fittest  must  survive. 

What  he  does  virtually  say  is: 

I  cannot  accept  the  unfortunate  theory  of 
Marx  which  says  that  ideas  grow  out  of  eco- 
nomic conditions,  but  it  cannot  be  disputed 
that  the  idea  of  Socialism  only  appears  where 
industrial  civilization  appears,  and  is  an  ex- 
pression of  it. 

Although  he  has  thus  unconsciously  adopted 
the  Marxian  theory  in  his  own  narrative,  he 
still  continues  to  argue  against  it.  To  make 
his  criticism  effective  he  realizes  he  must  find 
some  form  of  mental  activity  which  is  not 
governed  by  material  factors.  The  only  case 
he  can  think  of  is  religion. 

He  says:  "One  must  be  blind  to  historical 
and  actual  phenomena  who  would  make  reli- 
gion merely  a  product  of  economic  life.  Reli- 
gion is  an  independent  force,  often  sufficient 
to  modify  and  even  shape  economic  institu- 
tions." 

Here  we  have  once  more  the  unfounded  sup- 
position that  Marx  limited  "material"  factors 
to  the  merely  "economic."  Also  the  mistaken 
idea  that  Marx  denied  the  reaction  upon  the 
economic  world  of  ideas,  religious  or  other- 


76  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

wise.  These  two  considerations  destroy  what 
little  force  the  argument  has. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  blindness  to  "his- 
torical and  actual  phenomena"  which  said  as 
recently  as  fourteen  years  ago:  "Religion  is 
an  independent  force."  Independent  of  what? 
Is  it  independent  of  race,  climate,  and  mode 
of  life?  According  to  Marx,  all  these  factors 
play  an  important  part  in  the  story  of  religion. 
But  Marx  is  by  no  means  alone  in  this  view. 
Modern  anthropology  holds  to  this  opinion. 

If  religion  were  an  independent  force  in  any 
real  sense,  all  men  would  have  the  same  sense 
of  duty,  the  same  ideas  of  right  and  wrong. 
Ely  takes  the  position  of  the  intuitionalist  and 
this  is  one  of  the  main  conclusions  of  that 
position. 

Haeckel  says:  "Modern  anthropology  has 
ruthlessly  destroyed  that  pretty  dream.  .  .  . 
All  the  actions  and  customs  we  regard  as  sins 
or  loathsome  crimes,  .  .  .  are  considered 
by  other  nations,  in  certain  circumstances,  to 
be  virtues,  or  even  sacred  duties." 

Independent!  indeed!  The  Turcoman  has  a 
religion  which  approves  of  stealing.  Does  Ely 
suppose  that  this  religion  is  independent  of  the 
material  and  economic  fact  that  the  Turco- 
man makes  his  living  by  stealing?  If  Ely 
had  ever  been  able  to  assimilate  Darwinism 


PROF.    RICHARD    T.    ELY  77 

he  would  have  known  that  any  race  which 
accepted  and  conscientiously  followed  a  reli- 
gion which  condemned  the  method  by  which 
it  made  its  living  would  either  have  to  make 
its  living  in  some  other  way  or  disappear. 

Was  the  religion  which  dictated  the  wor- 
ship of  the  sacred  bird  Ibis  independent  of 
material  and  economic  facts?  This  bird  al- 
ways came  down  the  Nile  valley  in  advance 
of  the  approaching  overflow  without  which 
Egypt  could  have  no  crops.  The  Egyptians 
concluded  that  the  bird  was  the  cause  and  the 
overflow  the  effect — that  the  bird  was  not  only 
the  harbinger,  but  that  it  actually  brought  the 
water.  Thus  they  regarded  it  as  a  tremen- 
dous economic  factor — the  source  of  all  their 
wealth. 

The  Methodists  had  and  have  two  churches, 
a  North  and  a  South.  Is  this  "independent" 
of  the  historical  fact  that  in  the  civil  war  the 
south  stood  for  chattel  slavery,  by  which  it 
produced  its  wealth,  while  the  north  stood 
against  that  and  for  wage-slavery  by  which 
it  created  its  commodities  ? 

The  Jews  have  a  religious  law  commanding 
abstention  from  pork.  Is  this  "independent" 
of  material  factors,  or  is  it  due,  as  Dietzgen 
says,  to  the  fact  or  general  belief,  that  in  Syria 
pork  carried  the  contagion  of  leprosy? 


78  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

The  real  reason  why  Ely  cannot  accept  the 
Marxian  form  of  Socialism  is  that  he  was 
never  able  to  absorb  the  evolutionary  science 
of  his  time.  Marx  was  a  thorough  Darwinian 
and  he  kept  fully  abreast  of  the  progress  of 
positive  science. 

This  is  the  real  difference  at  bottom  between 
Marx  and  Ely. 

Having  repudiated  the  materialistic  concep- 
tion of  history,  Ely  is  quite  logical  when  he 
denies  the  class  struggle. 

He  says:  "What  is  called  an  'all-classes 
Socialism'  is  stronger  than  a  working-class 
Socialism.  Socialism  has  been  made  largely 
a  working-class  movement  in  Germany,  but 
this  has  had  a  most  unfortunate  effect.  Every 
well-wisher  of  the  United  States  and  England 
will  hope  that  Socialism,  in  these  two  coun- 
tries, may  lack  the  narrowness  as  well  as  the 
bitterness  which  accompanies  it  if  it  becomes 
a  working-class  movement." 

This  is  a  typical  and  instructive  example  of 
what  we  may  expect  from  those  "Socialistic" 
persons  who  reject  Marxian  materialism. 

Here  is  another  instance  of  what  we  may 
expect  from  those  bourgeois  intellectuals  who 
are  so  anxious  to  help  us,  but  are,  alas,  not 
sufficiently  intellectual  to  be  able  to  grasp  the 
nature  of  our  position: 


PROP.    RICHARD    T.    ELY  79 

"While  socialistic  agitation  has  had  a  benefi- 
cent influence  in  drawing  the  wage-earning 
classes  together,  and  creating  among  them  a 
feeling  of  fraternal  solidarity,  it  has,  on  the 
other  hand,  tended  to  separate  them  from  other 
classes  in  society,  depriving  them  of  the  help 
which  they  could  derive  from  these  other 
classes,  and  giving  them  an  unwarranted  con- 
fidence in  their  capacity  for  political  and  indus- 
trial leadership.  This  has  been  the  inevitable 
outcome  of  the  Marxist  Socialism,  which  treats 
Socialism  as  a  class  problem,  telling  the  work- 
ers that  their  emancipation  must  come  entirely 
from  their  own  efforts,  and  employing  the  war 
cry,  'Workmen  of  all  countries,  unite !'  Social- 
ism will  become  stronger  when  it  loses  its 
class  character  and  looks  for  leadership  to  men 
of  superior  intelligence  and  wide  experience." 

Against  the  charges  here  presented  against 
"Marxist  Socialism/'  no  defense  is  offered.  Its 
chief  est  glory  is  that  they  are  quite  true.  As 
for  those  who  come  to  our  ranks  from  above, 
experience  has  taught  us  that,  with  some 
brilliant  exceptions,  they  are  men  of  inferior 
and  not  superior  intelligence. 

The  professor  is  anxious  that  we  be  very 
gentle  in  our  attacks  on  capital,  and  not  dis- 
play any  disposition  to  hurt  people's  feelings. 

"It  is  really  a  great  weakness  in  a  presenta- 


80  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF   THE   BLIND 

tion  of  Socialism  to  call  rent,  interest,  and 
profits  robbery,  although  they  are  appropri- 
ated by  capitalists  and  other  classes  than  wage- 
earners." 

This  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  uncouth 
workers  to  call  things  by  their  real  names  is 
reprehensible  enough,  and  when  our  recruits  of 
"superior  intelligence"  come  among  us  in  suf- 
ficient numbers  they  will  no  doubt  teach  us 
better  manners. 

The  breeding  and  training  of  bull  pups  is 
not  a  suitable  occupation  for  maiden  ladies 
and  the  fierce  struggle  of  contending  classes 
has  little  to  offer  such  nice  gentlemen. 

The  professor  says:  "Those  who  advocate 
Socialism  should  do  so  fully  conscious  of  the 
services  which  capitalists  render  in  their  per- 
sonal efforts,  and  in  the  risks  which  they  take, 
and  also  be  well  aware  of  the  difficulties  ac- 
companying general  social  action." 

While  we  are  remembering  the  "risks'' 
which  capitalists  take  we  might  also  remem- 
ber those  taken  by  burglars,  whose  methods 
have  much  in  common  with  theirs  but  whose 
remuneration  is  less  substantial. 

The  professor  thinks  we  should  not  be  too 
pessimistic  about  the  present  regime.  We 
should  remember  that  the  general  darkness  is 
relieved  to  some  extent  by  the  operation  of 


PROP.    RICHARD    T.    ELY  81 

the  "caritative  principle."  This  means  that 
certain  persons  who  throw  all  scruples  aside 
in  the  mad  rush  to  get  wealth,  although  while 
doing  so  they  trample  on  the  widow  and  the 
orphan,  yet  when  wealth  has  been  achieved 
these  same  persons  are  quite  likely  to  change 
the  principle  of  their  lives  and  devote  them- 
selves to  philanthropy. 

Says  Ely:  "After  men  have  acquired  prop- 
erty through  the  primary  processes  of  pro- 
duction and  distribution,  they  frequently  dis- 
tribute it  according  to  quite  different  methods. 
A  man  who  enjoys  an  income  of  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars  a  year  may  use  a  large  por- 
tion of  this  income  to  ameliorate  the  inequal- 
ities and  injustices  which  result  from  the  pri- 
mary economic  processes.  He  may,  for  exam- 
ple, educate  a  poor  but  promising  young  per- 
son, and  give  him  every  opportunity  to  develop 
all  his  talents;  and  with  another  part  of  his 
surplus  income  he  may  relieve  the  necessities 
of  the  aged  and  infirm." 

It  is  no  doubt  a  very  great  pity  that  we  are 
unable  to  appreciate  the  full  weight  and  value 
of  these  considerations.  As  our  author  him- 
self observes  earlier  in  his  book  and  as  already 
cited,  Socialists  direct  their  main  attention  to 
the  cause  and  seek  the  prevention  of  poverty, 
rather  than  its  relief  later  by  charity. 


82  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

The  Socialist  has  failed  to  note  any  great 
degree  of  gentleness  on  the  other  side,  in  the 
waging  of  the  class  war. 

He  realizes  that  only  through  his  triumph 
in  that  war  can  he  ever  hope  to  have  an 
opportunity  to  live  a  really  human  life.  And 
so  he  waves  the  professor's  mincing  words 
and  baseless  objections  aside  and  turns  his 
attention  to  that  real  world  where  capital 
shows  no  quarter  to  any  of  its  victims  but 
ruthlessly  strikes  down  anyone  or  anything 
that  gets  in  its  juggernaut  path. 

The  gage  of  war  thrown  down  by  capital 
he  cheerfully  takes  up  and  stretching  hands 
across  the  seas  and  continents  he  calls  upon 
his  fellow  workers  everywhere,  in  the  words 
of  his  own  poet,  William  Morris, 

"Come,  join  in  the  only  battle  in  which  no 

man  can  fail; 
Where  whoso  fadeth  and  dieth,  yet  his  deed 
shall  still  prevail." 


V. 

Cesare  Lombroso. 

"The  truths  of  science/'  it  is  said,  "are  uni- 
versal ;  they  are  true  alike  for  the  ruling  class 
and  the  class  they  rule." 

This  is  undoubtedly  so,  but  there  is  much 
to  be  said  which  this  statement  does  not  con- 
tain. 

When  a  new  truth  is  discovered,  the  ques- 
tion of  its  general  acceptance  and  recognition 
will  depend,  not  on  its  clearness  or  obscurity 
but  on  its  relation  to  the  interest  of  the  class 
which  dominates  the  economic  and  therefore 
the  intellectual  life.  When  any  new  depart- 
ure in  thought  meets  with  wide  and  immedi- 
ate approval  in  a  class  society  it,  is  quite  safe 
to  conclude  that  the  new  idea  meets  the  needs 
of  the  social  rulers  and  in  some  way  justifies, 
or  at  least  excuses,  their  rule. 

During  the  last  thirty  years  new  sciences 
have  sprung  up  overnight  like  mushrooms. 
One  of  the  most  important  of  these  is  crimi- 
nology. Italian  writers  have  contributed  so 
heavily  to  the  literature  of  this  new  science 
that  it  may  almost  be  called  an  Italian  science. 


84  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP   THE   BLIND 

The  writer  whose  name  is  most  conspicu- 
ous in  the  general  mind  is  Cesare  Lombroso. 
The  European  and  American  press  with  one 
voice  proclaim  him  the  herald  of  the  new  sci- 
ence. This  is  precisely  what  we  might  expect, 
and  the  explanation  is  close  at  hand.  Not 
only  is  criminology  a  special  science,  but 
within  the  limits  of  that  science  even,  Lom- 
broso is  a  specialist  and  only  deals  with  one 
branch.  That  branch  does  not  carry  him  to 
the  root  of  the  bulk  of  the  crime  that  afflicts 
our  civilization.  That  branch  does  not  oblige 
him  to  threaten  the  position  of  the  ruling 
class.  This(  is  the  reason  why  Lombroso's 
name  always  looms  up  in  the  venal  press  when 
criminology  is  the  theme. 

Italy  possesses,  however,  a  greater  than 
Lombroso ;  a  criminologist  whose  theories  pen- 
etrate to  the  very  core  of  the  problem.  But 
just  because  they  do  so,  and  because  in  doing 
so  they  indict  the  existing  social  order,  his 
name  is  never  mentioned,  his  works  are  passed 
over  in  silence,  and  only  the  earnest  student 
knows  of  their  existence.  This  exponent  of  a 
revolutionary  criminology  is  Enrico  Ferri,  the 
Socialist  Deputy  in  the  Italian  Chamber. 

We  will  first  deal  with  Lombroso.  His  spe- 
cial field  is  criminal  anthropology.  Quarter- 
fages  defined  anthropology  as  "the  natural  his- 


CESARE   LOMBROSO  85 

tory  of  man;"  Ferri  defines  criminal  anthro- 
pology as  "the  natural  history  of  criminal 
man."  The  title  of  Lombroso's  first  and  chief 
book  is  "The  Criminal  Man." 

This  branch  of  criminology  in  the  hands  of 
Lombroso,  recalls-  the  phrenological  methods 
of  Dr.  Gall.  The  critics  of  phrenology  com- 
plain that  it  has  degenerated  in  the  hands  of 
Gall's  disciples  into  mere  cranioscopy.  Cra- 
nioscopy  has  never  proved  sufficiently  convinc- 
ing to  win  a  recognized  place  in  the  scientific 
world.  Yet  it  plays  an  important  role  in  Lom- 
broso's researches. 

George  Henry  Lewes,  the  biographical  his- 
torian of  philosophy,  says:  "We  may  point 
to  Dr.  Gall  as  having  formed  an  epoch  in  the 
history  of  philosophy  by  inaugurating  a  new 
method."  Gall's  service  to  psychology  resem- 
bles Buckle's  contribution  to  sociology. 

Just  as  Buckle  sought  to  give  sociology  a 
physical  foundation  by  finding  its  chief  fac- 
tors in  the  climate,  geography  and  geology  of 
the  country,  so  Gall  endeavored  to  give  psy- 
chology a  material  basis  by  discovering  a 
dependence  on  the  brain  as  it  was  supposed  to 
manifest  itself  in  the  size  and  shape  of  the 
skull. 

The  reason  Buckle  has  left  a  greater  name 
than  Gall  is  that  he  has  never  been  cursed  by 


86  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

disciples  who  insisted  that  his  crude  but  val- 
uable suggestions  were  a  perfect  system. 
Buckle's  suggestions  have  been  incorporated 
in  the  wider  theory  of  Marx;  and  proper  credit 
has  been  given.  Gall's  theories  have  been 
diverted  by  his  superficial  disciples  from  the 
broad  stream  of  advancing  science  and  formed 
into  an  isolated,  stagnant  pool. 

It  must  therefore  be  understood  that  the 
cranioscopy  of  Lombroso  is  not  the  cranio- 
scopy  of  the  phrenologist  who  displays  his 
unconvincing  model  head,  covered  with  a  mul- 
titude of  small  pictures  illustrating  his  gro- 
tesque theory,  that  the  brain  of  man  is  divided 
into  small  squares  like  a  waffle,  each  square 
containing  one  faculty,  and  undertakes  to  tell 
you  all  about  your  past  and  future  by  "feeling 
your  bumps." 

Lombroso's  cranioscopy  has  no  chart  and 
deals  only  with  general  measurements  of  the 
skull,  and  even  this  is  not  isolated  but  taken 
in  conjunction  with  all  the  physiological  and 
pathological  data  that  can  be  obtained.  Even 
then  it  is  open  to  a  good  deal  of  legitimate 
criticism,  and  if  it  is  put  forward  as  explaining 
the  greater  part  of  existing  crime,  it  breaks 
down  completely. 

Criminal  anthropology  in  the  hands  of  Lom- 
broso, has   done  much  to  advance   the  gen- 


CESARE    LOMBROSO  87 

eral  science  of  criminology.  Its  most  valuable 
service  has  been  in  the  direction  of  destrov- 
ing  the  supposition  that  the  criminal  is  respon- 
sible for  his  acts  and  therefore  at  the  same 
time  destroying  the  notion  that  crime  can 
be  cured  by  the  stupid  method  of  punishing 
the  criminal.  It,  should  be  clear,  even  to  the 
undeveloped  intellect  of  a  police  judge,  that  if 
society  has  no  right  to  punish  a  man  for  com- 
ing into  the  world  with  a  misshapen  head, 
neither  can  it  have  a  right  to  punish  him  for 
what  that  head  may  compel  him  to  do. 

Mr.  Dally,  addressing  the  Medico-Psycho- 
logical Society  of  Paris  in  1881,  said :  "All  the 
criminals  who  have  been  subjected  to  autopsy 
(after  execution)  gave  evidence  of  cerebral 
injury."  He  includes,  of  course,  injury  by 
disease. 

A  typical  instance  of  crime  due  to  accidental 
injury  of  the  brain  is  the  following  case  given 
by  Ferri: 

"When  I  was  a  professor  in  Pisa,  eight  years 
ago,  I  took  my  students  to  the  penitentiaries 
and  the  asylum  for  the  criminal  insane  in 
Montelupo,  as  I  always  used  to  do.  Dr.  Algi- 
eri,  the  director  of  this  asylum,  showed  us 
among  others  a  very  interesting  case.  This 
was  a  man  of  about  45,  whose  history  was 
shortly  the  following:    He  was  a  bricklayer 


83  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE   BLIND 

living  in  one  of  the  cities  of  Toscana.  He  had 
been  a  normal  and  honest  man,  a  very  good 
father,  until  one  unlucky  day  came,  in  which 
a  brick  falling  from  a  factory  broke  a  part  of 
his  skull.  He  fell  down  unconscious,  was 
picked  up,  carried  to  the  hospital,  and  cured 
of  his  external  injury,  but  lost  both  his  phys- 
ical and  moral  health.  He  became  an  epilep- 
tic. And  the  lesion  to  which  the  loss  of  the 
normal  function  of  his  nervous  system  was  due 
transformed  him  from  the  docile  and  even- 
tempered  man  that  he  had  been  into  a  quar- 
relsome and  irritable  individual,  so  that  he 
was  less  regular  in  his  work,  less  moral  and 
honest  in  his  family  life,  and  was  finally  sen- 
tenced for  a  grave  assault  in  a  saloon  brawl. 
He  was  condemned  as  a  common  criminal  to 
I  don't  know  how  many  years  of  imprison- 
ment. But  in  prison,  the  exceptional  condi- 
tions of  seclusion  brought  on  a  deterioration 
of  his  physical  and  moral  health,  his  epileptic 
fits  became  more  frequent,  his  character  grew 
worse.  The  director  of  the  prison  sent  him 
to  the  asylum  for  the  insane  criminals  at  Mon- 
telupo,  which  shelters  criminals  suspected  of 
insanity  and  insane  criminals. 

"Dr.  Algieri  studied  the  interesting  case  and 
came  to  the  diagnosis  that  there  was  a  splinter 
of  bone  in  the  man's  brain  which  had  not  been 


CESARE   LOMBROSO  89 

noticed  in  the  treatment  at  the  hospital,  and 
that  this  was  the  cause  of  the  epilepsy  and 
demoralization  of  the  prisoner.  He  trepanned 
a  portion  of  the  skull  around  the  old  wound 
and  actually  found  a  bone  splinter  lodged  in 
the  man's  brain.  He  removed  the  splinter, 
and  put  a  platinum  plate  over  the  trepanned 
place  to  protect  the  brain.  The  man  improved, 
the  epileptic  fits  ceased,  his  moral  condition 
became  as  normal  as  before,  and  this  brick- 
layer (how  about  the  free  will?)  was  dis- 
missed from  the  asylum,  for  he  had  given 
proofs  of  normal  behavior  for  about  five  or 
six  months,  thanks  to  the  wisdom  of  the  doc- 
tor who  had  relieved  him  of  the  lesion  which 
had  made  him  epileptic  and  immoral." 

Last  summer  the  Chicago  newspapers  called 
attention  to  the  case  of  a  boy  who  underwent 
an  operation  on  the  brain,  after  which,  al- 
though previously  well-behaved,  he  committed 
144  thefts  in  a  few  weeks. 

The  distinctive  feature  of  Lombroso's  de- 
partment of  criminology  is  that  it  seeks  the 
explanation  of  crime  in  the  physical  and  psy- 
chological condition  of  the  criminal,  whether 
that  condition  has  developed  during  the  life- 
time of  the  criminal  or  been  handed  down  by 
heredity  from  afflicted  .ancestors. 

Its  great  merit  is  that  it  has  added  to  the 


90  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

mass  of  evidence  against  the  exploded  doc- 
trine of  free-will  and  thereby  exploded  the 
essential  stupidity  of  the  penal  treatment  of 
crime.  Its  great  weakness  is  that  it  appears 
to  remove  not  only  the  responsibility  of  the 
criminal,  but  also  the  responsibility  of  society. 

Nothing  could  be  more  to  the  taste  of  the 
present  ruling  class  than  to  be  informed  that 
the  bulk  of  crime  is  due  to  tumor  on  the  brain 
or  the  hereditary  transmission  of  the  insanity 
taint,  for  it  is  hardly  likely  that  they  can  be 
held  responsible  for  troubles  that  are  organic. 

This  is  why  Lombroso  is  the  social  lion  and 
is  proclaimed  by  the  bourgeois  press  as  the 
founder  of  criminology,  while  Ferri,  who  has 
advanced  beyond  this  step  and  penetrated  to 
the  very  heart  of  the  question,  proving  this 
bourgeois  complacency  to  be  premature,  is 
practically  ignored. 

Ferri's  criminology  recognizes  three  factors 
in  the  causation  of  crime :  The  anthropologi- 
cal factor  (Lombroso's  field),  the  telluric  fac- 
tor and  the  sociological  factor.  While  these 
are  sufficiently  distinct  for  the  purposes  of  a 
working  theory  they  are  often  found  in  com- 
bination, sometimes  two,  and  sometimes  all 
three. 

Telluric  is  from  the  Latin  tellus, — uris, 
meaning  the  earth,  and   is  used  by  Ferri  to 


CESARE   LOMBROSO  91 

name  those  "earth  influences"  which  make  for 
crime.  An  excellent  example  is  to  be  found 
in  the  observations  of  Garibaldi  taken  while 
with  his  soldiers  on  the  pampas  in  South 
America.  He  noticed  that  when  the  pampero 
blew  the  sand  in  their  faces,  they  became  irri- 
table and  violent  quarrels  sprang  up,  while 
good  behavior  was  at  once  restored  when  the 
wind  ceased. 

Murro  has  pointed  out  that  in  prisons  where 
the  social  life  is  the  same  the  year  round, 
breaches  of  discipline  are  most  frequent  in  the 
hot  months.  Crimes  of  sex  are  more  frequent 
in  hot  countries,  and  more  frequent  in  all 
countries  in  the  hot  season. 

As  a  combination  of  the  telluric  factor  with 
the  anthropological  factor  Ferri  mentions  that 
there  are  3,000  cases  of  manslaughter  in  Italy 
annually,  while  England,  with  relatively  the 
same  population,  has  only  300.  This  may  be 
ascribed  to  the  hotter  climate — telluric, — and, 
difference  of  race — anthropological. 

Jules  Verne  showed  that  a  high  altitude 
produced  hilarity,  and  it  has  been  argued  that 
the  Dutch  are  slow  because  they  are  low. 

Ferri  cites  two  clear  examples  of  the  com- 
bination of  the  telluric  and  sociological  fac- 
tors. Brigandage  is  a  crime  that  has  its  roots 
in   geographical  conditions.     Death  penalties 


92  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE   BLIND 

were  of  no  avail  against  it;  but  when  these 
conditions  were  modified  by  the  appearance  of 
railroads,  the  brigands'  occupation  was  gone. 
In  the  same  way,  the  pirate  disappeared  on 
the  introduction  of  that  social  product,  the 
steamship. 

Important  as  are  the  anthropological  and 
telluric  roots  of  crime  they  dwindle  into  com- 
parative significance  when  we  come  to  that 
vast  and  prolific  breeding  ground  called  "social 
conditions." 

Here  Ferri  and  Lombroso  part  company. 
Ferri  accepts  and  applauds  Lombroso's  work 
in  criminal  anthropology,  but  if  Lombroso  in- 
dorses Ferri's  conclusions  in  the  domain  of 
criminal  sociology  he  keeps  it  a  secret  in  his 
own  bosom.  Where  Lombroso  mentions  the 
social  factor  and  refers  to  poverty  as  a  cause 
of  crime — usually  suicide — he  evidently  does 
so  as  a  concession  to  a  fact  too  glaring  to  be 
wholly  ignored. 

His  science,  like  that  of  Haeckel,  is  used  to 
vindicate  the  existing  order.  Haeckel  implies 
that  economic  class  divisions  in  human  soci- 
ety are  as  irremovable  as  physiological  class 
barriers  among  bees  and  ants;  Lombroso 
seeks  the  causes  of  crimes  clearly  due  to  social 
conditions,  in  the  size  of  the  skull  and  the 
color  of  the  hair.     Nowhere  does   Lombroso 


CESARE   LOMBROSO  93 

display  that  penetration  into  primary  causes 
of  crime  which  Ferri  reveals  in  this  fine  pass- 
age: 

"Want  is  the  strongest  poison  for  the  human 
body  and  soul.  It  is  the  fountain  head  of  all 
inhuman  and  antisocial  feeling.  Where  want 
spreads  out  its  wings,  there  the  sentiments  of 
love,  of  affection,  of  brotherhood,  are  impos- 
sible. Take  a  look  at  the  figures  of  the  peas- 
ant in  the  far-off  arid  Campagna,  the  little 
government  employe,  the  laborer,  the  little 
shopkeeper.  When  work  is  assured,  when  liv- 
ing is  certain,  though  poor,  then  want,  cruel 
want,  is  in  the  distance,  and  every  good  senti- 
ment can  germinate  and  develop  in  the  human 
heart.  The  family  then  lives  in  a  favorable 
environment,,  the  parents  agree,  the  children 
are  affectionate.  And  when  the  laborer,  a 
bronzed  statue  of  humanity,  returns  from  his 
smoky  shop  and  meets  his  white-haired 
mother,  the  embodiment  of  half  a  century  of 
immaculate  virtue  and  heroic  sacrifices,  then 
he  can,  tired,  but  assured  of  his  daily  bread, 
give  room  to  feelings  of  affection,  and  he  will 
cordially  invite  his  mother  to  share  his  frugal 
meal.  But  let  the  same  man,  in  the  same 
environment,  be  haunted  by  the  spectre  of 
want  and  lack  of  employment,  and  you  will  see 
the  moral  atmosphere  in  his  family  changing 


9i  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE  BLIND 

as  from  day  into  night.  There  is  no  work, 
and  the  laborer  comes  home  without  any 
wages.  The  wife,  who  does  not  know  how  to 
feed  the  children,  reproaches  her  husband  with 
the  suffering  of  his  family.  The  man,  having 
been  turned  away  from  the  doors  of  ten  offices,' 
feels  his  dignity  as  an  honest  laborer  assailed 
in  the  very  bosom  of  his  own  family,  because 
he  has  vainly  asked  society  for  honest  employ- 
ment. And  the  bonds  of  affection  and  union 
are  loosened  in  that  family.  Its  members  no 
longer  agree.  There  are  too  many  children, 
and  when  the  poor  old  mother  approaches  her 
son,  she  reads  in  his  dark  and  agitated  mien 
the  lack  of  tenderness  and  feels  in  her  mother 
heart  that  her  boy,  poisoned  by  the  spectre  of 
want,  is  perhaps  casting  evil  looks  at  her  and 
harboring  the  unfilial  thought:  'Better  an  open 
grave  in  the  cemetery  than  one  month  more 
to  feed  at  home !'  " 

Of  course  it  is  not  contended  that  the  mere 
fact  of  being  hungry  in  itself  makes  a  man 
commit  murder,  but  want,  long-continued, 
breaks  down  the  moral  forces  and  scruples  by 
demoralizing  the  physical  organism,  then  when 
the  temptation  arises,  the  deed  is  done.  Debs 
tells  of  a  peaceful,  law-abiding  citizen  who 
worked  on  the  railroad  before  the  A.  R.  U. 
strike.     He  was  a  member  of  the  union  and 


CESARE   LOMBROSO  95 

went  out  with  the  rest.  After  the  strike  he 
managed,  by  concealing  his  identity,  to  go 
back  to  work  in  spite  of  the  blacklist.  He  was 
well  known,  however,  to  one  of  the  foremen 
of  the  road  and,  time  after  time  this  man 
hunted  him  out  and  had  him  discharged.  He 
eudured  the  hardships  of  unemployment  and 
want  until  finally  he  became  desperate.  Then 
this  hitherto  peaceful  workman  bought  a  six- 
shooter  and  went  to  interview  the  cause  of  his 
misfortunes.  He  took  him  aside  and  explained 
to  him  that  he  had  secured  one  more  job  and 
was  going  to  make  one  more  attempt  to  earn 
a  living.  He  explained  that  if  he  lostt this  job 
as  he  had  lost  the  others  there  would  be  two 
deaths,  a  murder  and  a  suicide,  and  displayed 
his  weapon  as  a  token  of  good  faith.  The 
foreman  concluded  that  discretion  would  be 
the  better  part  of  valor  and  the  working  man 
continued  to  work  and  obey  the  law  which 
says,  "Thou  shalt  not  kill." 

If  this  case  had  taken  another  course,  as 
was  possible,  Lombroso  would  have  discov- 
ered that  the  murderer  had  certain  cranial 
anomalies  which,  together  with  certain  defi- 
ciencies of  cranial  capacity,  revealed  by  his 
measurements  which  would,  in  his  estimation, 
be  amply  sufficient  to  explain  this  departure 
from  normal  conduct.     These  anthropological 


96  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

factors  would  no  doubt  be  there,  and  some 
other  man  might  not  have  committed  murder 
even  under  those  circumstances.  Some  other 
man  with  a  different  cranium  might  have  been 
satisfied  with  suicide,  which  is  nevertheless 
listed  as  a  crime ;  another  might  have  taken  up 
the  profession  of  kidnapping  or  picking  pock- 
ets for  a  living.  But  the  point  is  that  when 
this  particular  working  man  had  persuaded  his 
tormentor  not  to  stand  between  him  and  his 
bread  supply,  he  refrained  from  crime  of  any 
kind. 

This  case  given  by  Debs  is  an  apt  illustra- 
tion of  that  crime  of  crimes,  the  fountain  which 
spouts  90  per  cent  of  all  the  crime  that  curses 
our  civilization.  That  great  crime  consists 
in  the  fact  that  one  relatively  small  class  in 
society  stands  between  the  mass  of  the  people 
and  its  bread  supply  and  dictates  whether  they 
shall  work,  beg,  starve,  or  steal. 

It  is  quite  clear  to  the  unprejudiced  mind 
that  so  long  as  the  means  of  the  life  of  all — 
the  machinery  of  production  and  distribution 
— remains  the  proper^  of  a  few,  any  treat- 
ment of  the  anthropological  and  telluric  fac- 
tors of  crime  will  leave  almost  untouched  the 
great  problem  of  applied  criminology. 

From  this  great  root  grow  other  contrib- 
uting branches  of  crime.    The  capitalist  class, 


CESARE   LOMBROSO  97 

in  order  to  protect  its  private  property  in  the 
means  of  life,  maintains  a  vast  military  organ- 
ization to  prevent  any  interference  on  the  part 
of  its  victims.  The  members  of  this  organiza- 
tion are  trained  solely  in  the  art  of  human 
butchery  and  it  would  be  indeed  strange  if 
such  a  profession  did  not  engender  brutality 
in  the  community  generally. 

The  spectacle  of  a  policeman  marching  back 
and  forth,  swinging  a  club,  and  ready  to  beat 
any  citizen  who  may  be  nursing  the  delusion 
that  he  has  a  right  to  talk  back  to  a  luminary 
of  the  law,  is  not  calculated  to  inculcate  gen- 
tleness or  loving  kindness.  It  is  hardly  a 
matter  for  great  surprise  if  the  youth  of  the 
slums,  with  this  picture  constantly  before  him, 
and  untrained  in  the  art  of  detecting  fine  dis- 
tinctions, should  sneak  out  of  a  dark  alley  and 
strike  down  some  wayfarer  with  a  piece  of 
lead  pipe. 

A  reader  of  the  newspaper  —  that  great  ve- 
hicle of  popular  education  —  is  driven  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  most  important  current 
event  is  some  bloody  murder,  and  that  what 
the  public  mind  most  needs  is  the  prominent 
display  of  all  the  horrible  details.  An  impor- 
tant matter  of  public  policy  is  disposed  of  in  a 
few  lines ;  the  particulars  of  some  insane  mur- 
der are  spread  over  as  many  pages. 


98  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE   BLIND 

When  Edmund  Burke  attacked  the  French 
revolution  he  inveighed  bitterly  against  the 
outrages  perpetrated  by  the  revolutionists.  He 
says  nothing  about  the  terrible  outrages  which 
had  provoked  them.  When  the  people  were 
actually  starving,  Foulon  said :  "Let  the  peo- 
ple eat  grass."  This  excites  no  horror  in  the 
mind  of  Burke,  but  when  the  people  of  Paris 
caught  Foulon  and  in  their  desperation  hung 
him  to  a  lamp  post  and  choked  him  with  grass, 
and  afterwards  carried  his  head  and  that  of  the 
governor  of  bastile  around  the  city  on  pikes, 
Burke  is  properly  shocked.  Such  crimes  were 
not  to  be  thought  of,  let  alone  sympathized 
with.  In  reply  to  Burke,  Paine  wrote  "The 
Rights  of  Man"  and  in  the  following  passages 
he  reminds  Burke  of  where  the  desperate  pop- 
ulace had  learned  to  place  heads  on  pikes : 

"They  learn  it  from  the  governments  under 
which  they  live;  and  retaliate  the  pun- 
ishments they  have  been  accustomed  to  behold. 
The  heads  stuck  upon  pikes  which  remained 
for  years  on  Templebar  (England)  differed 
nothing  in  the  horror  of  the  scene  from  those 
carried  about  on  pikes  in  Paris ;  yet  this  was 
done  by  the  English  government.  It  may, 
perhaps,  be  said,  that  it  signifies  nothing  to  a 
man  what  is  done  to  him  after  he  is  dead,  but 
it  signifies  much  to  the  living;  it  either  tor- 


CESARE   LOMBROSO  99 

tures  their  feelings  or  hardens  their  hearts, 
and  in  either  case,  it  instructs  them  how  to 
punish  when  power  falls  into  their  hands. 
...  In  England  the  punishment  in  certain 
cases  is  by  hanging,  drawing  and  quartering* 
the  heart  of  the  sufferer  is  cut  out  and  held 
up  to  the  view  of  the  populace.  In  France, 
under  the  former  government,  the  punish- 
ments were  not  less  barbarous.  Who  does  not 
remember  the  execution  of  Damien,  torn  to 
pieces  by  horses?  The  effect  of  these  cruel 
spectacles  exhibited  to  the  populace  is  to  de- 
stroy tenderness  or  excite  revenge ;  and  by  the 
base  and  false  idea  of  governing  men  by  terror 
instead  of  reason,  they  become  precedents.,, 

Of  all  the  forms  of  crime  so-called,  that 
afflict  present  civilization,  the  one  in  which 
social  conditions  are  most  plainly  the  leading 
cause  is  surely  prostitution.  This  is  by  no 
means  clear  to  Lombroso.  His  book  dealing 
with  this  question  is  entitled  "The  Female 
Offender."  To  all  but  the  intellectual  hire- 
lings of  the  bourgeoise  it  is  clear  that  society 
is  the  real  "offender"  and  not  the  unfortunate 
creature  who  is  more  sinned  against  than  sin- 
ning. « 

Two  cases  Lombroso  cites  which  in  them- 
selves should  have  taught,  him  the  truth.  They 
are  both  cases  of  suicide.     He  says: 


100        TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE  BLIND 

"A  beautiful  young  girl  left  a  letter  saying 
that  she  had  nothing  left,  all  she  possessed 
being  in  pawn.  'I  might  have  had  a  well 
stocked  shop,  but  I  prefer  death  to  the  exist- 
ence of  a  fallen  woman/  " 

The  other  is  that  of  a  young  woman  who 
left  behind  her  the  following  letter: 

"I  have  tried  in  a  thousand  ways  to  find 
work  and  I  have  only  met  with  hearts  of  stone 
or  vile  characters  to  whose  infamous  proposi- 
tions I  would  not  listen." 

But  Lombroso  learns  nothing  from  these 
cases.  He  fills  page  after  page  explaining  that 
prostitutes  have  smaller  skulls,  lighter  hair, 
darker  eyes,  heavier  bodies,  and  shorter  feet 
than  normal  women. 

Those  who  have  probed  this  question  are 
heartily  sick  of  all  this  nonsense.  Suppose  we 
concede  that  the  prostitute  has  on  the  average 
a  smaller  brain,  what  has  been  proven? 

What,  indeed,  but  that  they  live  in  a  damn- 
able society  which  drives  its  weakest  and  most 
defenseless  members  ruthlessly  to  the  wall. 
How  can  prostitution  be  abolished  in  a  society 
where  thousands  of  women  are  paid  wages  on 
the  calculation  that  they  can  obtain  the  bal- 
ance of  their  living  expenses  by  the  sale  of 
their  bodies?    If  any  brains  are  to  be  mcas- 


CESARE    LOMBROSO  101 

ured  it  is  time  we  measured  the  brain  of 
society. 

Let  us  have  a  criminology  that  lays  the  axe 
to  the  root  and  by  giving  all  men  and  women 
an  opportunity  freely  to  exercise  all  their  fac- 
ulties in  the  supply  of  all  their  needs,  abol- 
ishes the  greatest  of  all  the  causes  of  crime. 

The  annals  of  the  working  class  have  been 
a  long-drawn-out  tragedy,  every  scene  replete 
with  blood  and  murder,  but  at  last  we  are  pre- 
paring to  ring  down  the  curtain  and  reset  the 
stage  for  a  brighter  epoch  in  the  Drama  of 
History. 


VI. 

Max  Stirner. 

One  of  the  most,  universally  accepted  prov- 
erbs is  that  which  says,  "It  is  the  unexpected 
which  happens."  Herbert  Spencer,  arguing 
against  what  he  conceived  to  be  the  Socialist 
tendencies  of  his  day,  elevated  this  idea  to 
the  position  of  a  general  principle.  So  impor- 
tant does  it  seem  to  him  that  it  is  invoked  as 
a  great  sociological  law. 

He  calls  attention  to  the  mass  of  laws  which 
had  to  be  repealed  because  they  failed  to  have 
the  expected  effect  or  had  an  opposite  effect  to 
the  one  expected.  He  fails  to  see  that  many 
of  these  laws  were  only  experiments  in  certain 
directions  and  were  in  reality  abandoned,  not 
for  the  reason  he  assigns,  but  because  they 
were  then  supplanted  by  other  laws  based  on 
riper  experience,  which  accomplished  the  samn 
end  more  effectively. 

Spencer's  argument  is  that  the  attempt  to 
remedy  social  abuses  by  "meddling"  legisla- 
tion, not  only  fails  in  the  great  majority  of 
cases,  but  that  it  very  often  aggravates  the 
very  evil  it  was  intended  to  cure. 
102 


MAX    STIRNER  103 

One  of  his  most  striking  illustrations  is  the 
case  of  a  certain  early  English  king  who  under- 
took to  reduce  the  drunkenness  among  his 
subjects  by  special  legislation.  He  enacted 
that  all  the  tankards  used  in  the  alehouses 
should  be  fitted  with  pegs  on  the  inside  at  a 
certain  distance  from  each  other.  The  quan- 
tity of  beer  contained  between  two  of  these 
pegs  was  to  be  the  maximum  for  a  legal 
draught.  Anyone  imbibing  more  than  one  peg 
at  one  swig  became  a  criminal  before  the  law. 

For  a  time  this  law  had  the  desired  effect. 
Presently,  however,  a  very  strong  public  sen- 
timent grew  up  against  those  persons  who 
gave  information  to  the  authorities.  Like  the 
publicans  of  old,  these  "informers"  became 
largely  social  outcasts.  As  there  was  no  com- 
mensurate compensation,  evidence  ceased  to 
be  obtainable  and  the  law  fell  into  disuse. 

Like  rudimentary  organs,  however,  the  pegs 
remained  and  eventually  entered  upon  a  new 
career  of  usefulness.  It  became  a  practice  to 
test  one's  drinking  capacity  by  swallowing  the 
greatest  possible  number  of  pegs  of  beer  at 
one  effort.  Men  who  valued  this  kind  of 
celebrity  became  known  by  the  number  of 
pegs  they  could  dispose  of  at  one  draught. 
This  even  developed  a  new  aristocracy,  as  Six- 
Peg  Bill  would  put  on  airs  before  Four-Peg 


104         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

Tom,  who  belonged  to  an  inferior  social 
stratum.  Then  it  became  popular  to  hold  con- 
tests in  the  alehouses,  in  which  prizes  were 
given  to  those  who  gulped  down  the  most  pegs 
without  stopping. 

As  an  example  of  how  missionary  activity 
sometimes  miscarried,  Spencer  cites  the  Malay- 
ans, who  when  they  were  expostulated  with 
for  their  barbarous  practice  of  crucifixion,  ex- 
plained they  had  learned  it  from  the  sacred 
books  of  the  English. 

To  the  long  list  of  unexpected  developments 
compiled  by  Spencer,  history  has  added  at 
least  one  more.  The  anarchists  of  all  schools 
have  always  been  impatient  of  the  slow  and 
non-revolutionary  methods  of  all  Social  Dem- 
ocrats. They  were  to  be  the  revolutionists 
par  excellence.  All  revolutionary  pretentions 
that  did  not  carry  the  anarchist  brand  were 
only  pretentions. 

And  now,  alas!  the  anarchist  movement  — 
what  there  is  left  of  it  —  has  become,  as  was 
its  destiny,  one  of  the  most  hopelessly  reac- 
tionary forces  in  society.  Tolstoy,  the  Chris- 
tian communist  anarchist,  with  his  doctrine  of 
non-resistance,  becomes  a  chief  buttress  of  the 
Russian  Autocracy.  The  individualist  anar- 
chist who  follows  Stirner,  learns  to  sneer  at 
the   unemployed   or   unfortunate   workers   as 


MAX    STIRNER  105 

incompetent  egos  who  should  be  weeded  out 
because  they  are  not  able  to  "stand  on  noth- 
ing but  themselves." 

In  order  to  trace  Stirner's  philQSOphical 
genealogy  and  at  the  same  time  that  of  Marx, 
we  will  begin  at  1830. 

In  the  world  of  philosophy  from  1830  to 
1840  the  scepter  was  held  by  Hegel.  Hegel's 
philosophy  was  taught  in  the  German  univer- 
sities, and  had  the  approval  of  the  Prussian 
throne. 

Frederick  William  III  regarded  it  as  a  very 
excellent  philosophy  —  in  fact,  an  intellectual 
bulwark  of  the  crown.  He  reached  that  com- 
placent conclusion  in  a  very  simple  way. 
Hegel  said :  "All  that  is  real  is  reasonable,  and 
all  that  is  reasonable  is  real."  The  Emperor 
interpreted  this  as  follows:  All  that  exists  is 
real,  therefore  reasonable,  therefore  right.  As 
Alexander  Pope,  the  English  poet,  put  it, 
"Whatever  is,  is  right." 

As  this  seemed  to  be  a  philosophical  justi- 
fication of  police-government,  the  censorship, 
and  the  star-chamber,  the  Hegelian  philosophy 
flourished  under  royal  patronage.  The  Lib- 
erals, who  claimed  to  be  progressive,  were 
greatly  exercised  that  the  country  should  fall 
urder  the  spell  of  a  philosophy  so  thoroughly 
reactionary. 


106         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF   THE   BLIND 

And  jet  all  these  wise  persons  were  de- 
ceived. That  seeming  benediction  of  the  exist- 
ing regime  hid  a  revolutionary  principle,  which 
in  the  hands  of  Marx  became  the  fundament 
of  the  Socialist  philosophy. 

Hegel's  idea  as  to  what  constituted  reality 
differed  very  widely  from  the  Emperor's.  With 
him  reality  included  necessity  —  that  only  was 
real  which  was  at  the  same  time  necessary. 

For  example :  If  the  monarchy  was  a  "nec- 
essary" part  of  feudal  society,  its  necessity 
made  it  real  and  therefore  reasonable,  and  in 
that  sense,  right.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  when 
feudalism  began  to  break  up,  the  monarchy 
ceased  to  be  a  necessity,  it  thereby  lost  its 
attribute  of  reality  and  ceased  to  be  either  rea- 
sonable or  right.  About  the  only  man  who 
saw  the  immense  significance  of  this  besides 
Marx  was  Heinrich  Heine. 

At  one  time  the  government  of  America  by 
England  was  real  because  at  that  time  it  pos- 
sessed the  element  of  necessity;  but  by  1776 
its  necessity  had  disappeared  and  its  reality 
went  with  it. 

The  trouble  with  Hegel,  however,  was  that 
this  revolutionary  principle  was  confined  to, 
his  method  and  could  not  penetrate  his  system. 
His  system  of  philosophy,  being  idealistic, 
could    not   absorb    this   evofutionary   concept 


MAX    STIRNER  107 

without  committing  logical  suicide.  In  Hegel's 
system  the  material  world  is  derived  from  the 
idea — the  absolute  idea.  This  problem,  as  is  well 
known  now,  is  at  bottom  theological.  Hegel's 
system  is  the  presentation  in  philosophical 
garb  of  the  theological  view  that  the  material 
universe  is  the  realization  of  the  idea  of  Deity. 

On  the  other  hand,  according  to  Hegel's 
method,  the  "idea"  of  reasonableness  grows 
out  of  material  reality.  This  constitutes  the 
Hegelian  contradiction. 

This  contradiction  caused  the  Hegelians  to 
split  into  two  camps  —  tjie  left,  and  the  right. 
The  right  held  to  the  idealistic  system  and 
were  reactionary.  The  left  took  the  revolu- 
tionary method,  which  culminated  in  the  his- 
torical materialism  of  Marx. 

The  immortal  honor  of  solving  the  Hegelian 
contradiction  fell,  not  to  Marx  but  to  Ludwig 
Feuerbach.  Feuerbach,  in  his  "Essence  of 
Christianity,"  showed  that,  as  Engels  states 
it,  "Outside  man  and  nature  nothing  exists, 
and  the  higher  beings  which  our  religious 
phantasies  have  created  are  only  the  fantastic 
reflections  of  our  individuality." 

Philosophically  stated,  this  means  that  the 
idea  grows  out  of  the  material  world.  This 
solution  by  Feuerbach  of  the  Hegelian  con- 
tradiction greatly  rejoiced  Marx  and  Engels. 


108         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

Engels  says  of  it:  "It  placed  materialism  on 
the  throne  again  without  any  circumlocution. 
.  .  .  The  cord  was  broken,  the  system  was 
scattered  and  destroyed,  the  contradiction, 
since  it  had  only  existed  in  the  imagination, 
was  solved.  One  must  have  felt  the  deliver- 
ing power  of  this  book  to  get  a  clear  idea  of 
it.  The  enthusiasm  was  universal;  we  were 
all  for  the  moment  followers  of  Feuerbach. 
How  enthusiastically  Marx  greeted  the  new 
idea,  and  how  he  was  influenced  by  it,  in  spite 
of  all  his  critical  reservations,  one  may  read 
iii  his  'Holy  Family.' 

Feuerbach  had  gone  as  far  as  he  could  go; 
the  work  of  carrying  his  great  discovery  to 
its  ultimate  and  fruitful  conclusion,  fell  to 
Marx. 

This  Marx  at  once  did.  As  the  material 
world  gave  forth  the  idea,  theological  or  phi- 
losophical, the  material  world  is  the  only  real- 
ity. Man  is  a  product  of  the  material  world 
—  nature.  Society  is  the  product  of  two  mate- 
rial causes  —  man,  and  nature.  The  founda- 
tion of  society  consists  of  the  material  means 
by  which  it  produces  the  material  things  by 
which  it  satisfies  its  material  needs.  There- 
fore, if  one  section  of  society  has  exclusive 
ownership  or  control  of  the  material  means  of 
producing  material  wealth,  those  who  are  shut 


MAX    STIRNER  109 

out  will  only  be  able  to  supply  their  material 
needs  as  the  owners  may  dictate  —  a  material 
slavery.  As  the  intellectual  grows  out  of  the 
material,  this  material  slavery  carries  with  it 
intellectual   slavery. 

This  material  slavery,  and  the  intellectual 
slavery  growing  out  of  it,  can  only  be  abol- 
ished by  the  removal  of  its  material  cause,  the 
abolition  of  that  limited  ownership  and  con- 
trol of  the  material  means  of  producing  mate- 
rial things,  and  the  establishment  in  its  place 
of  ownership  and  control  by  the  whole  of  soci- 
ety, social  democracy,  in  one  word  —  Social- 
ism. 

Such  is  the  pedigree  of  the  Socialist,  phi- 
losophy. 

Now,  let  us  trace  the  development  of  Stir- 
ner's  Egoism.  Stirner  accepts  Feuerbach's 
explanation  of  the  imaginary  origin  of  the 
theological  idea.  But  he  complains  that  as 
Feuerbach  only  abolishes  one  abstraction  — 
Deity  —  to  set  up  in  its  place  another  abstrac- 
tion—  humanity — we  are  really  no  better  off 
than  we  were  before.  We  are  rescued  from 
the  tyranny  of  one  abstraction  to  be  under 
the  obedient  slavery  of  another. 

Says  Stirner:  "Let  us,  in  brief,  set  Feuer- 
bach's theological  view  and  our  contradiction 
over  against  each  other !    'The  essence  of  man 


HO    TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

is  man's  supreme  being;  now  by  religion,  to 
be  sure,  the  supreme  being  is  called  God  and 
regarded  as  an  objective  essence,  but  in  truth 
it  is  only  man's  own  essence;  and  therefore 
the  turning  point  of  the  world's  history  [ac- 
cording to  Feuerbach]  is  that  henceforth  no 
longer  God,  but  man,  is  to  appear  to  man  as 
God.'" 

Stirner  contends  that  this,  instead  of  abol- 
ishing the  slavery  of  the  individual,  only  gives 
him  a  new  master.  Although  this  new  mas- 
ter is  conceived  as  being  inside  the  individual, 
it  is  no  more  the  individual  than  the  master 
who  was  outside:  "It  is  all  one  in  the  main 
whether  I  think  of  the  essence  as  in  me  or 
outside  me." 

Nay  even  this  distinction  breaks  down :  "For 
the  'Spirit  of  God'  is,  according  to  the  Chris- 
tian view,  also  'our  spirit,'  and  'dwells  in  us.' " 

And  so,  where  Marx  and  Engels  saw  a  great 
liberation,  Stirner  saw  only  the  exchange  of 
one  theological  myth  for  another. 

This  is  by  no  means  all.  In  addition  to  this 
abstraction  Humanity,  the  individual  is  to  be 
enslaved  by  a  host  of  others;  justice,  freedom, 
the  fatherland,  the  good,  the  true,  and  the 
beautiful.  All  these  have  great  causes  which 
must  be  served.  The  only  cause  which  a  man 
must  not  serve  is  his  own  cause. 


MAX    STIRNER  1U 

But,  demands  Stirner,  do  these  tyrants  prac- 
tice any  of  the  self-abnegation  they  require 
from  us?  Not  in  the  least;  they  serve  only 
themselves. 

As  tjiis  is  the  pith  of  Stirner's  position,  and 
as  it  is  very  strikingly  presented  in  the  pro- 
logue to  his  book,  "The  Ego  and  His  Own," 
we  will  let  him  speak  for  himself  by  quoting 
it  in  full : 

"What  is  not  supposed  to  be  my  concern! 
First  and  foremost,  the  Good  Cause,  then 
God's  cause,  the  cause  of  mankind,  of  truth, 
of  freedom,  of  humanity,  of  justice;  further, 
the  cause  of  my  people,  my  prince,  my  father- 
land; finally,  even  the  cause  of  Mind,  and  a 
thousand  other  causes.  Only  my  cause  is 
never  to  be  my  concern.  'Shame  on  the  egoist 
who  thinks  only  of  himself!' 

"Let  us  look  and  see,  then,  how  they  man- 
age their  concerns — they  for  whose  cause  we 
are  to  labor,  devote  ourselves,  and  grow  en- 
thusiastic. 

"You  have  much  profound  information  to 
give  about  God,  and  have  for  thousands  of 
years  'searched  the  depths  of  the  Godhead/ 
and  looked  into  its  heart,  so  that  you  can 
doubtless  tell  us  how  God  himself  attends  to 
'God's  cause,'  which  we  are  called  to  serve. 
And  you  do  not  conceal  the   Lord's   doings, 


112         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP   THE   BLIND 

either.  Now,  what  is  his  cause?  Has  he,  as 
is  demanded  of  us,  made  an  alien  cause,  the 
cause  of  truth  or  love,  his  own?  You  are 
shocked  by  this  misunderstanding,  and  you 
instruct,  us  that  God's  cause  is  indeed  the  cause 
of  truth  and  love,  but  this  cause  cannot  be 
called  alien  to  him,  because  God  is  himself 
truth  and  love ;  you  are  shocked  by  the  assump- 
tion that  God  could  be  like  us  poor  worms 
in  furthering  an  alien  cause  as  his  own. 
'Should  God  take  up  the  cause  of  truth  if  he 
were  not  himself  truth?'  He  cares  only  for 
his  cause,  but,  because  he  is  all  in  all,  there- 
fore all  is  his  cause!  But  we,  we  are  not  all 
in  all,  and  our  cause  is  altogether  little  and 
contemptible ;  therefore  we  must  'serve  a  high- 
er cause/  — -  Now  it  is  clear,  God  cares  only 
for  what  is  his,  busies  himself  only  with  him- 
self, thinks  only  of  himself,  and  has  only  him- 
self before  his  eyes ;  woe  to  all  that  is  not  well 
pleasing  to  him!  He  serves  no  higher  per- 
son, and  satisfies  only  himself.  His  cause  is 
—  a  purely  egoistic  cause. 

"How  is  it  with  mankind,  whose  cause  we 
are  to  make  our  own?  Is  its  cause  that  of 
another,  and  does  mankind  serve  a  higher 
cause?  No,  mankind  looks  only  at  itself,  man- 
kind will  promote  the  interests  of  mankind 
only,  mankind  is  its  own  cause.     That  it  may 


MAX    STIRNER  113 

develop,  it  causes  tiations  and  individuals  to 
wear  themselves  out  in  its  service,  and,  when 
they  have  accomplished  what  mankind  needs, 
it  throws  them  on  the  dung-heap  of  history  in 
gratitude.  Is  not  mankind's  cause  —  a  purely 
egoistic  cause? 

"I  have  no  need  to  take  up  each  thing  that 
wants  to  throw  its  cause  on  us  and  show  that 
it  is  occupied  only  with  itself,  not  with  us, 
only  with  its  good,  not  with  ours.  Look  at 
the  rest  for  yourselves.  Do  truth,  freedom, 
humanity,  justice,  desire  anything  else  than 
that  you  grow  enthusiastic  and  serve  them  ? 

"They  all  have  an  admirable  time  of  it  when 
they  receive  zealous  homage.  Just  observe  the 
nation  that  is  defended  by  devoted  patriots. 
The  patriots  fall  in  bloody  battle  or  in  the  fight 
with  hunger  and  want;  what  does  the  nation 
care  for  that?  By  the  manure  of  their  corpses 
the  nation  comes  to  'its  bloom!'  The  indi- 
viduals have  died,  'for  the  great  cause  of  the 
nation/  and  the  nation  sends  some  words  of 
thanks  after  them  and  —  has  the  profit  of  it. 
I  call  that  a  paying  kind  of  egoism. 

"But  only  look  at  the  Sultan  who  cares  so 
lovingly  for  his  people.  Is  he  not  pure  unsel- 
fishness itself,  and  does  he  not  hourly  sacrifice 
himself  for  his  people?  Oh,  yes,  for  'his  peo- 
ple/    Just  try  it;  show  yourself  not  as  his, 


114         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

but  as  your  own;  for  breaking  away  from  his 
egoism  you  will  take  a  trip  to  jail.  The  Sul- 
tan has  set  his  cause  on  nothing  but  himself; 
he  is  to  himself  all  in  all,  he  is  to  himself  the 
only  one,  and  tolerates  nobody  who  would 
dare  not  to  be  one  of  'his  people/ 

"And  will  you  not  learn  by  these  brilliant 
examples  that  the  egoist  gets  on  best?  I  for 
my  part  take  a  lesson  from  them,  and  propose, 
instead  of  further  unselfishly  serving  those 
great  egoists,  rather  to  be  the  egoist  myself. 

"God  and  mankind  have  concerned  them- 
selves for  nothing,  for  nothing  but  themselves. 
Let  me,  then,  likewise  concern  myself  for  my- 
self, who  am  equally  with  God  \hc  nothing 
of  all  others,  who  am  my  all,  who  am  the  only 
one. 

"If  God,  if  mankind,  as  you  affirm,  have 
substance  enough  in  themselves  to  be  all  in 
all  to  themselves,  then  I  feel  that  I  shall  still 
less  lack  that,  and  that  I  shall  have  no  com- 
plaint to  make  of  my  'emptiness/  I  am  noth- 
ing in  the  sense  of  emptiness,  but  I  am  the 
creative  nothing,  the  nothing  out  of  which  I 
myself  as  creator  create  everything. 

"Away,  then,  with  every  concern  that  is  not 
altogether  my  concern!  You  think  at  least 
the  'good  cause'  must  be  my  concern?  What's 
good,   what's   bad?     Why,   I   myself  am   my 


MAX    STIRNER  U5 

concern,  and  I  am  neither  good  nor  bad. 
Neither  has  meaning  for  me. 

"The  divine  is  God's  concern ;  the  human, 
man's.  My  concern  is  neither  the  divine  nor 
the  human,  not  the  true,  good,  just,  free,  etc., 
but  solely  what  is  mine,  and  it  is  not  a  gen- 
eral one,  but  is  —  unique,  as  I  am  unique. 

"Nothing  is  more  to  me  than  myself." 

This  leads  Stirner  to  preach  "self-owner- 
ship." The  individual  should  free  himself  from 
the  domination  of  all  things  outside  himself 
and  serve  himself  alone. 

And  now  we  see  how  completely  Stirner  has 
severed  himself  from  the  world  of  real  things 
—  the  world  as  it  actually  is.  How  would 
this  self-owned,  self-centered,  self-dependent 
individual  dress?  Not  in  cloth,  surely.  The 
man  who  dresses  in  cloth  does  so  because  he 
is  being  "served"  by  thousands  who  toil  in 
the  textile  industry,  and  instead  of  indepen- 
dently severing  himself,  he  interdependently 
serves  them  in  return  —  or  he  is  a  social  Para- 
site. 

How  would  he  learn  the  time  of  day?  At 
least  not  by  a  watch.  Watches  cannot  be 
made  by  independent  egoists,  but  only  by  co- 
operating workers.  A  little  reflection  shows 
that  a  watch,  or  a  pair  of  shoes,  or  any  other 
of  the  common  articles  that  have  become  nee- 


110  TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP   THE   BLIND 

essities  in  the  twentietji  century,  so  far  from 
being  individual  productions,  are  the  result  of 
the  labor  of  all  society  and  of  many  genera- 
tions. 

In  the  midst  of  this  great  ever-increasing 
material  and  intellectual  interdependence,  Stir- 
ner's  concept  of  a  "self-owned  individual" 
wanders  like  a  homeless  ghost.  Of  all  the 
"abstractions"  which  he  has  contemptuously 
discarded,  none  were  as  thin  and  unreal  as  this 
one. 

This  self-owned  individual  could  be  no  bet- 
ter than  a  naked  gibbering  savage.  Individ- 
ual forces  are  nothing  until  by  combination, 
they  become  social  forces. 

Apart  from  this  fatal  weakness  of  Egoism 
as  an  individual  philosophy,  it  could  have  no 
application  or  force  in  a  class  society. 

To  a  man  who  must  work  eight  or  ten  hours 
a  day  for  another  man,  any  talk  about  self- 
ownership  is  mockery.  No  man  can  really 
own  his  own  mind  so  long  as  some  other  man 
owns  his  body.  And  how  shall  a  man  own 
his  own  body  in  a  society  where  others  own 
the  means  by  which  alone  that  body  can  be 
kept  alive. 

The  truth  there  is  in  Egoism  is  not  indi- 
vidualistic but  Socialistic.  Stirner  blunders 
hopelessly  when  he  thinks  there  is  any  differ- 


MAX   STIRNER  uy 

ence  in  the  principle  which  actuates  the  Sul- 
tan and  that  which  actuates  the  meanest  of 
his  subjects. 

The  one  is  just  as  egoistic  as  the  other.  The 
reason  for  the  apparent  difference  is  due  to  the 
difference  in  their  social  condition.  The  sub- 
ject abjectly  serves  the  despot,  not  as  a  man- 
ifestation of  altruism  but  because  he  believes 
he  is  thereby  most  effectively  serving  him- 
self—  under  the  conditions. 

If  Stirner  wishes  the  subject  to  behave  dif- 
ferently he  should  propose  a  change  in  the 
conditions. 

The  working  man  is  just  as  egoistic  in  the 
principle  of  his  action  as  anyone  else.  If, 
when  he  has  produced  $10  in  wealth  he  makes 
no  protest  against  the  confiscation  of  $7  of  it 
by  useless  loafers,  it  must  not  be  construed 
as  an  act  of  altruistic  generosity.  This  same 
worker  will  discuss  at  great  length,  and  with 
much  heat,  the  chances  of  increasing  his  part 
by  a  tiny  fraction.  He  is  egoistic  enough  as 
far  as  he  can  see.  The  reason  he  does  not 
rise  up  in  his  egoism  and  stop  the  confiscation 
altogether  is  that  the  possibility  of  doing  so 
has  not  yet  come  within  the  scope  of  his  intel- 
ligence. 

His  slave  condition  is  not  due  to  any  lack  of 
desire  for  self-service  or  self-ownership  even 


118      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

in  a  rational  sense.  It  is  due  to  what  Loria 
describes  as  the  "perversion"  of  his  ego  by  a 
vast  army  of  teachers  —  unproductive  labor- 
ers, Loria  calls  them  —  whose  function  in  soci- 
ety is  to  surcharge  his  brain  with  the  ideas 
of  a  class  above  him,  so  that  he  will  act  accord- 
ing to  their  interests  instead  of  his  own. 

Just  in  proportion  as  he  escapes  that  "per- 
version" by  establishing  a  press  and  platform 
of  his  own,  he  learns  that  the  way  to  freedom 
lies,  not  in  standing  on  himself,  as  individual- 
ism suggests,  but  in  the  victory  of  his  class, 
as  Socialism  holds. 

The  worker  who  is  of  a  student  turn  of 
mind  and  fails  to  perceive  this  great  truth  and 
becomes  impregnated  with  the  sterile  ideas  of 
individualist  anarchism,  ends  by  feeling  him- 
self isolated  from  the  real  pulsing  world,  and 
retiring  into  himself  and  leading  thenceforth 
a  life  of  morbid  introspection,  much  after  the 
fashion  of  a  medieval  devotee.  He  will  tell 
you  that  he  is  above  all  forms  of  that  vulgar 
thing  called  propaganda,  and  is  devoting  him- 
self entirely  to  "art"  —  which  usually  means 
painting  pictures  nobody  will  hang,  or  writing 
verses  nobody  will  print. 

So  far  as  the  battle  for  future  progress  is 
concerned,  you  may  count  him  out.  Like  his 
own  philosophy,  he  has  fallen  by  the  wayside. 


MAX    STIRNER  119 

Walt  Whitman,  who  represents  individual- 
ism at  its  best,  writes:  "I  sing  the  song  of 
myself."  To  this  the  Socialist  replies :  "Inas- 
much as  my  redemption  is  bound  up  in  that  of 
my  class,  'I  sing  the  song  of  my  class.'  And 
as  my  class  has  been  called  upon  by  destiny 
to  be  the  instrument  of  liberation  from  the 
last  form  of  human  slavery,  when  I  sing 
oppression  and  the  dawn-song  of  the  race." 


VII. 
Thomas  Carlyle. 

Whatever  may  be  said  for  and  against  So- 
cialism by  its  critics  or  defenders,  it  must  be 
conceded  by  all  impartial  readers  of  its  stand- 
ard literature  that  Socialism  has  at  least  given 
us  the  foundation  of  a  true  science  and  phi- 
losophy of  history. 

Before  Socialism,  by  sheer  merit  and  the- 
conspicuous  ability  of  its  exponents,  compelled 
recognition  in  the  bourgeois  world  of  science 
and  letters,  the  question  was:  "Is  a  science 
of  history  possible  ?" 

As  to  the  answer,  bourgeois  thinkers  were 
divided.  The  poets,  essayists  and  historians, 
floating  in  the  cloudlands  of  idealism,  said  no. 
The  scientists,  working  in  close  contact  with 
the  real  world,  were  inclined  to  the  affirma- 
tive. 

As  it  is  the  function  of  history  to  record 
the  story  of  society,  a  science  of  history  and 
a  science  of  society  are  practically  the  same. 

As  an  example  of  those  who  deny  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  science  of  history  and  society  we 
may  take  the  English  historian  Froude. 
120 


THOMAS    CARLYLE  121 

Froude  argues  that  the  existence  of  a  free  will 
in  man  makes  such  a  science  impossible. 

He  says:  "When  natural  causes  are  liable 
to  be  set  aside  and  neutralized  by  what  is 
called  volition,  the  word  science  is  out  of  place. 
If  it  is  free  to  a  man  to  choose  what  he  will 
do  or  not  do,  there  is  no  adequate  science  of 
him.  .  .  .  It  is  in  this  marvelous  power 
in  men  to  do  wrong  .  .  .  that  the  impos- 
sibility stands  of  forming  scientific  calcula- 
tions of  what  men  will  do  before  the  fact,  or 
scientific  explanations  of  what  men  have  done 
after  the  fact." 

There  is  no  disputing  Froude's  logic. 
Granted  the  existence  of  free  will  and  the  rest 
follows.  The  free  will  myth  stood  in  the  path 
of  science,  and  science  swept  it  into  oblivion. 

A  still  greater  bar  to  the  growth  of  historical 
science  was  that  theory  associated  with  the 
name  of  Thomas  Carlyle,  and  very  generally 
accepted,  called  "The  Great  Man  Theory." 

It  was  the  great  misfortune  of  Carlyle  to  be 
forever  writing  criticisms  of  other  people 
which  applied  with  far  greater  force  to  him- 
self. Sir  Walter  Scott  had  written  some  Scot- 
tish annals  under  the  title  of  "Tales  of  a 
Grandfather."  Carlyle,  after  reading  them, 
made  the  following  criticism:  "An  amusing 
narrative,  clear,  precise,  and  I  suppose  accu- 


122      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OP    THE    BLIND 

rate ;  but  no  more  a  history  of  Scotland  than 
I  am  Pope  of  Rome.  A  series  of  palace  in- 
trigues and  butcheries,  and  battles,  little  more 
important  than  those  of  Donnybrook  Fair;  all 
the  while  that  Scotland,  quite  unnoticed,  is 
holding  on  her  course  in  industry,  in  arts,  in 
culture,  as  if  'Langside'  and  'Clean-the-Cause- 
way'  had  remained  unfought.  Strange  that  a 
man  should  think  he  was  writing  the  history 
of  a  nation  while  he  was  chronicling  the 
amours  of  a  wanton  young  woman  called 
queen." 

Strange  indeed!  And  strange  how  vividly 
this  criticism  brings  up  his  own  pseudo-his- 
torical narrative  of  the  French  revolution  and 
especially  his  longer  work,  the  "History  of 
Frederick."  His  history  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution is  simply  a  series  of  brilliant  sketches. 
Instead  of  making  his  narrative  follow  history, 
the  facts  are  made  to  bend  to  his  craving  for 
striking  scenes  and  sensational  effects.  He 
anticipated  the  methods  of  yellow  journalism. 
Instead  of  persuading  his  reader  he  constantly 
seeks  to  astonish  until,  having  created  an  ap- 
petite for  the  astonishing  he  is  obliged  to  neg- 
lect what  he  shall  say  in  the  search  for  some 
grotesque  or  unusual  way  of  saying  it.  Any 
fact  of  history  that  could  not  be  fitted  into 
one  of  his  pictures  was  thrown  aside  as  of  no 


THOMAS    CARLYLE  123 

importance.  Yet,  he  would  describe  the  shoe 
buckles  and  buttons  of  one  of  those  principal 
figures  which  he  regarded  as  the  mainsprings 
of  history. 

Carlyle's  failure  as  an  historian  is  due  to 
his  inability  to  grasp  the  nature  of  his  theme 
and  therefore  the  proper  function  of  the  real 
historian.  In  "Heroes  and  Hero  Worship," 
he  formulates  his  main  thesis  as  follows :  "As 
I  take  it,  Universal  History,  the  history  of 
what  man  has  accomplished  in  this  world,  is 
'  at  bottom  the  history  of  the  great  men  who 
have  worked  here.  They  were  the  leaders  of 
men,  these  great  ones ;  the  modelers,  patterns, 
and  in  a  wide  sense  creators,  of  whatsoever 
the  general  mass  of  men  contrived  to  do  or 
attain;  all  things  that  we  see  standing  accom- 
plished in  the  world  are  properly  the  outer 
material  result,  the  practical  realization  and 
embodiment,  of  thought  that  dwelt  in  the 
great  men  sent  into  the  world :  the  soul  of  the 
whole  world's  history,  it  may  justly  be  con- 
sidered, was  the  history  of  these." 

Because  Carlyle  occasionally  expressed  rad- 
ical sentiments  (usually  in  private)  his  uncrit- 
ical admirers  have  failed  to  note  how  reaction- 
ary he  is  at  bottom,  though  his  defense  of  the 
brutal  treatment  pf  prisoners  should  have 
warned  them. 


124      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

Here  is  another  statement  of  his  shallow 
and  now  obsolete  theory  of  history,  together 
with  some  of  its  vicious  consequences: 

"The  spiritual  will  always  body  itself  forth 
in  the  temporal  history  of. men;  the  spirit  is 
the  beginning  of  the  temporal.  And  now,  sure 
enough,  the  cry  is  everywhere  for  Liberty  and 
Equality,  Independence  and  so  forth;  instead 
of  kings,  ballot-boxes,  and  electoral  suffrages ; 
it  seems  made  out  that  any  hero-sovereign,  or 
loyal  obedience  of  men  to  a  man,  in  things 
temporal  or  spiritual,  has  passed  away  forever 
from  the  world.  I  should  despair  of  the  world 
altogether,  if  so.  One  of  my  deepest  convic- 
tions is,  that  it  is  not  so.  Without  sovereigns, 
true  sovereigns,  temporal  and  spiritual,  I  see 
nothing  possible  but  an  anarchy;  the  hate- 
fullest  of  things." 

A  pretty  example  of  the  working  of  this 
theory  is  his  application  of  it  to  Luther  and 
the  reformation. 

According  to  Carlyle,  the  whole  reforma- 
tion hinges  on  Luther.  He  relates  how  when 
Luther  went  to  appear  before  the  Diet  at 
Worms,  the  people,  from  windows  and  house- 
tops, begged  him  not  to  recant.  Carlyle  (says: 
"Was  it  not  our  petition  too,  the  petition  of 
the  whole  world,  lying  in  dark  bondage  of 
soul,  paralyzed  under  a  black  spectral  night- 


THOMAS     CARLYLE 


125 


mare  and  triple-hatted  chimera,  calling  itself 
'Father  in  God*  and  what  not;  Tree  us,  it 
rests  with  thee ;  desert  us  not  V  " 

The  picture  presented  here  and  throughout 
the  narrative,  is  of  one  man  fighting  the  battle 
of  his  world  and  ours,  alone.  Had  Carlyle 
striven  less  for  sensation  and  paid  more  atten- 
tion to  the  facts  of  history,  he  might  have 
made  several  discoveries  very  damaging  to 
this  view. 

The  noble  rulers  of  Germany  were  ripe  for 
a  revolt  against  Rome.  It  was  what  Loria 
calls  a  case  of  the  "bi-partition  of  the  rev- 
enue." The  historian  Swinton  says  they  were 
"angered  at  seeing  large  quantities  of  money 
drained  from  their  own  country  to  be  expended 
on  works  of  art  in  Italy."  When  Luther  vis- 
ited Rome  he  saw  that  the  expending  of  this 
income  was  by  no  means  limited  to  "works  of 
art." 

The  German  princes  believed  themselves 
fully  able  to  spend  any  money  that  could,  on 
any  pretext,  be  wrung  from  the  German  peas- 
antry. This  attitude  had  found  sufficient  ex- 
pression to  make  it  impossible  for  any  one  to 
live  in  Germany,  as  Luther  did,  without  know- 
ing that  revolt  was  in  the  air.  Luther's  pro- 
test was  simply  a  spark  which  fell  into  a 
powder   magazine.     The   moment   the   battle 


126       TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

began  Frederick,  Duke  of  Saxony,  followed  by 
a  great  crowd  of  nobles,  rushed  to  his  support. 
While  at  Worms  he  was  protected  by  a  "safe- 
conduct"  given  by  Charles  V. 

It  is  quite  clear  to  everybody  but  Carlyle, 
that  had  it  not  been  for  the  material  interests 
of  these  German  nobles,  Luther  would  either 
not  have  revolted  in  the  first  place,  or  he 
would  have  been  shipped  to  Rome  and  burned 
at  the  stake  as  a  meddling  disturber. 

As  this  economic  factor  did  not  fit  with 
Carlyle's  romantic  picture,  it  is  passed  over 
in  silence.  Either  this,  or  so  patent  a  fact 
was  invisible  to  him. 

Some  historians  have  been  so  little  im- 
pressed with  Luther  as  a  "Hero-priest"  as  to 
have  pointed  out  certain  possible  motives 
which  would  be  badly  out  of  place  in  Carlyle's 
melodrama. 

Swinton  for  instance  remarks  that  Tetzel, 
who  sold  the  obnoxious  revenue-raising  in- 
dulgences, belonged  to  the  Dominican  order, 
which  had  been  given  the  monopoly  for  Ger- 
many. Luther  was  an  Augustinian  monk  and 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  bitter  rivalry  between 
the  two  orders. 

Carlyle  himself  relates  how  Luther  had  been 
disgusted  by  what  he  saw  at  Rome,  but  de- 
cided to  keep  quiet.     When  Tetzel  came  to 


THOMAS     CARLYLE  127 

Wittenberg,  Carlyle  says :  "Luther's  own  flock 
bought  indulgences:  in  the  confessional  of  his 
own  church  people  pleaded  to  him  that  they 
had  already  got  their  sins  pardoned." 

Thus,  even  according  to  Carlyle,  it  was  only 
when  Tetzel  trenched  on  the  functions  of 
Luther's  office,  "at  the  very  center  of  the  little 
space  of  ground  that  was  his  own  and  no  other 
man's,  that  he  had  to  step  forth  against  in- 
dulgences." 

Carlyle's  own  narrative  clearly  carries  the 
inference,  to  which  he  himself  seems  to  be 
blind,  that  had  Tetzel  passed  by  Wittenberg 
and  left  Luther  in  the  undisturbed  possession 
of  his  own  flock,  there  might  have  been  no 
reformation. 

And  this  defender  of  his  own  order  and  his 
own  office,  is  proclaimed  to  the  world  as  a 
disinterested  hero.  He  marched  right  bravely 
to  Worms — with  the  Emperor's  "safe-con- 
duct." He  flouted  the  terrible  power  of  the 
Papacy — with  the  ruling  class  of  his  own  and 
some  other  important  countries  almost  solidly 
behind  him. 

All  this  counts  for  nothing  with  Carlyle 
who  is  intent  on  finding  in  Luther  the  main- 
spring and  sole  cause  of  everything.  Hence 
we  are  prepared  for  the  following  extravagant 
eulogy: 


128      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

"I  will  call  this  Luther  a  true  great  man: 
great  in  intellect,  in  courage,  affection  and 
integrity ;  one  of  our  most  lovable  and  precious 
men." 

Again,  "A  right  spiritual  hero  and  prophet; 
once  more  a  true  son  of  nature  and  fact,  for 
whom  these  centuries  and  many  that  are  to 
come  yet,  will  be  thankful  to  Heaven." 

It  is  worth  while  to  note  what  this  "true  son 
of  nature  and  fact,"  and  "great  in  intellect" 
had  to  say  about  certain  important  questions 
of  "  nature  and  fact." 

By  this  time  "every  schoolboy  knows,"  as 
Macaulay  would  have  said,  that  the  founder 
of  modern  astronomy  was  a  cetrain  Prussian 
named  Copernicus.  With  this  man's  name 
modern  science  begins.  For  fourteen  hundred 
years.  Ptolemy's  system  of  the  universe  had 
held  its  ground  unchallenged.  But  this 
Prussian,  by  a  close  scrutiny  of  "nature  and 
fact,"  for  twenty  years,  overthrew  that  system 
by  reversing  it.  He  was  a  contemporary  of 
Luther's  and  a  very  illustrious  one. 

This  is  what  Luther  said  of  him  and  his 
discovery : 

"People  gave  ear  to  an  upstart  astrologer 
who  strove  to 'show  that  the  earth  revolves, 
not  the  heavens  or  the  firmament,  the  sun  and 
the  moon.     Whoever  wishes  to  appear  clever 


THOMAS     CARLYLE  129 

must  devise  some  new  system,  which  of  all 
systems  is,  of  course,  the  best.  This  fool 
wishes  to  reverse  the  entire  science  of 
astronomy;  but  sacred  Scripture  tells  us  that 
Joshua  commanded  the  sun  to  stand  still,  not 
the  earth." 

The  truth  is  that  when  it  came  to  a  case  of 
"nature  and  fact,"  Luther  was  an  ignorant 
fanatic.  His  colleague  and  favorite  disciple, 
the  mild  Melanchthon,  gave  his  view  of  the 
theory  of  Copernicus  thus :  "Now  it  is  want  of 
honesty  and  decency  to  assert  such  notions 
publicly,  and  the  example  is  pernicious.  It  is 
the  part  of  a  good  mind  to  accept  the  truth  as 
revealed  by  God  and  to  acquiesce  in  it." 

Melanchthon  proposed  that  severe  measures 
should  be  taken  against  such  subverters  of 
accepted  opinions,  and  one  can  easily  imagine 
that  he  and  Luther  would  have  made  a  happy 
pair  of  spectators  could  they  have  been  present 
at  the  burning  of  Bruno.  As  to  Luther  being 
"a  lovable  and  precious  man,"  we  may  recall 
his  remarks  as  recorded  by  himself  in  his 
autobiography  anent  the  peasants'  revolt. 
When  the  peasants,  who  had  applauded 
Luther,  rose  against  their  terrible  conditions 
of  existence,  Luther  said:  "No  mercy,  no 
toleration  is  due  to  the  peasants:  on  them 
should  fall  the  wrath  of    God    and    of  man." 


130      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OP    THE    BLIND 

And  he  recommended  that  they  be  "treated  like 
mad  dogs."  A  lovable  man,  indeed,  and  about 
the  most  "precious"  thing  about  him  is  that  he 
is  dead. 

None  of  these  things  moved  Carlyle  and  he 
made  a  consistent  application  of  his  great  man 
theory  by  making  all  subsequent  history  de- 
pend on  what  Luther  did  at  the  Diet  of 
Worms. 

"It  is,  as  we  say,  the  greatest  moment  in  the 
modern  history  of  men.  English  Puritanism, 
England  and  its  parliaments,  Americas,  and 
vast  work  these  two  centuries ;  French  revolu- 
tion, Europe  and  its  work  everywhere  at 
present;  the  germ  of  it  all  lay  there:  had 
Luther  in  that  moment  done  other,  it  had  all 
been  otherwise." 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  say  just  what 
would  have  happened  if  Luther  had  "done 
other,"  but  the  overwhelming  probabilities  are 
that  some  other  torch  would  have  blazed  forth 
in  that  inflammable  air,  and  that  the  result 
would  have  been  about  the  same. 

Luckily  there  is  one  field  of  human  activity 
where  this  point  can  be  put  squarely  to  the 
test.    This  is  the  history  of  the  sciences. 

In  1609  two  Dutch  spectacle  makers,  Jansen 
and  Lippershey,  invented  the  telescope.  The 
telescope  has  done  great  things  for  astronomy ; 


THOMAS    CARLYLB  131 

and  astronomy  has  made  possible  the  art  of 
navigation ;  and  upon  navigation  depends  the 
great  bulk  of  modern  commerce.  It  would 
require  very  little  application  of  Carlyle's 
historical  method  to  make  out  a  case  that  all 
modern  history  depended  on  these  twin  heroes 
inventing  the  telescope.  It  is  a  little  against 
the  theory  that  there  should  be  two  of  them 
but  unfortunately  the  record  seems  to  be  hazy 
as  to  which  was  first,  although  tradition 
favors  Jansen. 

It  is  quite  certain,  however,  that  the  inven- 
tion of  the  telescope  did  not  depend  on  either 
or  both  of  them;  for  in  the  following  year 
Galileo  made  one  of  his  own  without  seeing 
theirs  or  knowing  anything  about  their  partic- 
ular method.  Bacon  and  Porta  had  foreseen 
the  possibility  and  if  none  of  these  three  had 
succeeded,  there  is  no  doubt  that  about  that 
time  some  one  else  would  have  done  so. 

Few  sciences  have  achieved  so  greatly  as 
chemistry.  Among  its  most  brilliant  feats 
must  be  placed  the  discovery  of  oxygen. 
Stahl  had  maintained  that  all  burnable  bodies 
contained  an  invisible  substance  which  he 
called  "phlogiston,"  and  that  during  com- 
bustion they  gave  this  phlogiston  out  into  the 
air.  This  theory  was  contradicted  by  the  fact 
which  Geber  had  observed  1500  years  before 


132      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OP    THE    BLIND 

that  many  bodies  are  heavier  after  combustion 
than  before,  showing  that  something  has  been 
added  rather  than  lost.  Lead  for  instance  is 
heavier  when  molten  than  when  solid.  Priestly 
succeeded  in  proving  that  mercuric  oxide  was 
composed  of  mercury  and  a  gas.  This  gas  he 
managed  to  separate  and  breathe  into  his  own 
lungs  with  very  pleasant  results. 

Lavoisier,  suspicious  of  Stahl's  theory, 
proved  not  only  that  when  metals  are  heated 
until  they  turn  into  powder  they  weigh  heavier 
than  before,  but  also  that  the  air  in  which  they 
were  heated  lost  just  as  much  weight  as  the 
metal  had  gained. 

He  was  at  a  loss  to  understand  what  was 
the  element  thus  drawn  from  the  atmosphere 
until  he  reflected  upon  the  experiments  of 
Priestley.  He  then  proved  that  this  element 
was  the  same  gas  as  Priestley  had  separated 
from  mercury  and  used  in  breathing.  This 
gas,  discovered  by  Priestley,  Lavoisier  christ- 
ened "oxygen"  from  the  two  Greek  words 
which  mean  "I  produce  acid/'  because  he 
found  that  most  substances  were  acid  after 
they  were  united  with  it. 

If  Carlyle  had  applied  his  hero  theory  to 
Priestley  as  the  discoverer  of  oxygen  he  would 
have  easily  been  able  to  show  that  had  Priest- 
ley "done  other,"  oxygen  would  have  been  un- 


THOMAS    CARLYLE  133 

known  and  its  many  benefits  would  have  been 
lost  to  the  world.  Then  the  whole  course  of 
the  history  of  chemistry  and  many  other  re- 
lated matters  "had  been  otherwise.,, 

Alas,  for  this  dramatic  effect,  while  Priest- 
ley was  busy  making  his  discovery  in  England, 
the  same  experiments  were  being  carried  on 
by  a  poor  apothecary  at  Kjoping,  a  little 
village  in  Sweden,  who  had  never  heard  of 
Priestley,  but  nevertheless  arrived  inde- 
pendently at  precisely  the  same  result  — 
oxygen. 

In  1775  Immanuel  Kant  gave  the  world  a 
book  of  two-hundred  pages  which  contained 
a  new  conception  of  the  universe.  This  was 
that  famous  nebular  theory  which  revolution- 
ized our  ideas  of  the  origin  of  heavenly  bodies. 
Although  this  unpretentious  volume,  "A 
Theory  of  the  Heavens,"  will  always  preserve 
the  fame  of  Kant  it  cannot  be  held  that  we 
had  to  depend  on  him  for  the  great  truth  it 
contained.  Almost  as  soon  as  it  was  written 
it  was  forgotten,  and  its  importance  was  never 
realized  until  forty-five  years  later  when 
Pierre  Laplace  published  in  1799  his  "Mecani- 
que  Celeste"  in  which  the  theory  re-appeared, 
independently  discovered. 

In  1871  Sir  William  Herschel  discovered 
the    planet  Uranus    moving    outside    all    the 


134      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

planets  then  known.  The  peculiar  thing  about 
this  new  planet  was  that  it  did  not  move  as 
it  should  according  to  the  law  of  gravitation. 
A  calculation  of  the  attraction  of  the  sun  and 
all  the  other  known  bodies  failed  to  explain 
why  Uranus  strayed  so  far  off  into  space,  and 
out  of  what  appeared  to  be  its  proper  orbit. 

Here  was  a  splendid  opportunity  for  some 
"Hero  as  Scientist,"  "sent  into  the  world"  to 
solve  this  mystery  and  add  thereby  to  the  sum 
of  human  knowledge. 

England  possessed  a  man  who  had  mastered 
algebra  when  a  boy  of  ten.  As  soon  as  he 
had  taken  his  degree  at  Cambridge  he  set 
about  the  solution  of  this  problem,  not  by  ob- 
servation, but  by  mathematical  calculation. 
In  October  of  1845  he  sent  a  paper  to  the 
Astronomer-Royal,  Mr.  Airy  at  Greenwich, 
telling  him  that  if  he  would  turn  his  great 
telescope  upon  a  certain  part  of  the  heavens 
at  a  certain  time  he  would  discover  an  un- 
known planet  which  would  fully  explain  the 
mysterious  movements  of  Uranus.  Owing  to 
red  tape,  bungling,  and  want  of  a  proper  star 
map,  nothing  came  of  it  at  that  time.  Later 
it  was  found  that  Adams  was  correct  and  the 
new  body  thus  discovered  is  now  the  planet 
Neptune. 

If    Carlyle   had   written    the   history    of   this 


THOMAS     CARLTLE  1^5 

development  he  would  have  found  no  room 
for  his  "great  man  theory."  It  would  have 
been  useless  for  him  to  argue  that  but  for 
Adams  the  history  of  astronomy  would  have 
been  otherwise. 

A  French  mathematician,  Leverrier,  had 
been  working  on  this  problem  and  the  very 
month  after  Adams  sent  his  paper  to  Airy, 
Leverrier  published  his  conclusions ,  which 
were  the  same  within  one  degree  as  to  posi- 
tion, in  "The  Journal  of  the  Academie  des 
Sciences."  The  following  year  the  Astron- 
omer-Royal Airy,  reading  this  journal,  was 
surprised  to  see  that  Leverrier  had  agreed  so 
closely  with  Adams  as  to  the  position  of  the 
new  planet.  He  and  Prof.  Challis  of  Cam- 
bridge then  set  about  the  search  for  it  and  on 
August  4  they  discovered  it,  but  for  want  of 
a  star  map  of  that  part  of  the  heavens  were 
unable  to  properly  identify  it.  Meanwhile 
Leverrier  published  another  paper  in  the  latter 
part  of  that  same  August,  the  31st,  stating  the 
new  planet's  position  still  more  accurately. 
This  paper  he  sent  to  his  friend,  M.  Galle,  of 
the  Berlin  Observatory,  asking  him  to  look  in 
the  part  of  the  sky  indicated.  M.  Galle  did  so 
that  very  night  and  discovered  the  new  planet 
seen  nearly  a  month  before  by  Prof.  Challis, 
but  as  he  had  a  proper  chart  he  made  the  first 


136      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

proper  identification  and  record.  Thus,  al- 
though the  priority  really  belongs  to  Adams 
it  has  always  been  popularly  given  to  Lever- 
rier,  much  as  the  "nebular  theory"  is  by  many 
regarded  as  being  first  discovered  by  Laplace. 

The  collapse  of  the  "great  man"  theory  is 
nowhere  so  clearly  seen  as  in  the  circum- 
stances of  the  discovery  of  the  great  scientific 
generalization  which  will  be  forever  linked 
with  the  great  name  of  Darwin — natural 
selection.  If  any  man  could  be  called  "The 
Hero  as  Scientist,"  to  use  Carlyle's  phrase,  it 
must  surely  be  Darwin. 

As  Newton  had  waited  sixteen  years  for 
more  convincing  proof  of  the  truth  of  the 
gravitation  theory  before  announcing  it,  Dar- 
win worked  twenty,  and  would  have  worked 
longer  if  he  had  not  been  interrupted.  Alfred 
Russell  Wallace,  who  was  pursuing  his  studies 
as  a  naturalist  in  the  Malay  archipelago,  sent 
home  a  paper  to  Darwin,  asking  him  to  be  so 
kind  as  to  read  it  Tor  him  at  the  meeting  of  the 
Linnean  Society.  When  Darwin  read  this 
paper  to  himself  he  discovered  that  here  was 
a  clear  description  of  that  very  theory  upon 
which  he  had  been  working  in  secret  so  many 
years.  On  the  advice  of  his  friends,  Lyell  the 
famous  geologist,  and  Dr.  Hooker,  he  read 
Wallace's  paper  and  one  of  his  own  written 


THOMAS    CARLYLE  137 

years  before  at  the  meeting  of  the  society  the 
1st  of  July,  1858.  One  year  later  he  published 
his  famous  "Origin  of  Species." 

The  part  played  by  Wallace  is  wholly  fatal 
to  the  great  man  theory.  His  presentation 
was  clear  and  unmistakable.  Robert  Rives  La 
Monte  thinks  it  was  even  clearer  than  Dar- 
win's own. 

And  so  the  theory  which  revolutionized'  all 
our  thinking  did  not  depend  on  Darwin  doing 
as  he  did,  and  if  "he  had  done  other"  we  can- 
not say  that  "it  had  all  been  otherwise." 

There  is  one  more  signal  instance  of  the 
failure  of  the  great  men  theory  which  should 
be  noted  here.  Those  Socialists  who  imagine 
there  would  have  been  no  scientific  Socialism 
but  for  Marx  are  clearly  in  the  wrong.  We 
know  beyond  question  that  what  Wallace  was 
to  Darwin,  Engels  was  to  Marx. 

In  the  preface  to  the  Communist  Manifesto 
Engels,  speaking  of  that  "materialistic  con- 
ception of  history,"  which  is  the  core  of 
scientific  Socialism,  says:  "The  proposition 
which,  in  my  opinion,  is  destined  to  do  for 
history  what  Darwin's  theory  has  done  for 
biology,  we  both  of  us,  had  been  gradually 
approaching  for  some  years  before  1845.  How 
far  I  had  independently  progressed  towards  it 
is  best  shown  by  my  'Condition  of  the  Work- 


138      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OP    THE    BLIND 

ing  Class  in  England/  But  when  I  again  met 
Marx  at  Brussels,  in  spring,  1845,  he  had  it 
ready  worked  out,  and  put  it  before  me  in 
terms  almost  as  clear  as  those  in  which  I  have 
stated  it  here." 

Thus  have  science  and  the  history  of  science 
completely  demolished  Carlyle's  theory. 

There  is  also  another  weapon  which  has 
been  used  with  disastrous  effect  against 
Carlyle.  The  man  who  handled  this  weapon 
most  brilliantly  was  Herbert  Spencer,  who  is 
only  an  individualist  when  he  steps  out  of  his 
evolutionary  philosophy  into  the  field  of 
politics. 

In  his  "Study  of  Sociology"  Spencer  proves 
conclusively  that  even  if  we  concede  the  great 
man's  greatness  we  must  look  for  his  origin 
in  "that  aggregate  of  conditions"  out  of  which 
he  came.  As  it  seems  impossible  to  improve 
either  Spencer's  argument  or  his  statement  of 
it  we  will  here  quote  at  length : 

"Even  were  we  to  grant  the  absurd  supposi- 
tion that  the  genesis  of  the  great  man  does  not 
depend  on  the  antecedents  furnished  by  the 
society  he  is  born  in,  there  would  still  be  the 
quite  sufficient  facts  that  he  is  powerless  in  the 
absence  of  the  material  and  mental  accumula- 
tions which  his  society  inherits  from  the  past, 
and  that  he  is  powerless  in  the  absence  of  the 


THOMAS     CARLTLE  139 

co-existing  population,  character,  intelligence, 
and  social  arrangements.  Given  a  Shakspeare, 
and  what  dramas  could  he  have  written  with- 
out the  multitudinous  traditions  of  civilized 
life — without  the  various  experiences  which, 
descending  to  him  from  the  past,  gave  wealth 
to  his  thought,  and  without  the  language 
which  a  hundred  generations  had  developed 
and  enriched  by  use?  Suppose  a  Watt,  with 
all  his  inventive  power,  living  in  a  tribe 
ignorant  of  iron,  or  in  a  tribe  that  could  get 
only  as  much  iron  as  a  fire  blown  by  hand- 
bellows  will  smelt;  or  suppose  him  born 
among  ourselves  before  lathes  existed;  what 
chance  would  there  have  been  of  the  steam 
engine?  Imagine  a  Laplace  unaided  by  that 
slowly  developed  system  of  mathematics  which 
we  trace  back  to  its  beginnings  among  the 
Egyptians;  how  far  would  he  have  got  with 
the  Mecanique  Celeste  ?  Nay,  the  like  questions 
may  be  put  and  have  like  answers,  even  if  we 
limit  ourselves  to  those  classes  of  great  men 
on  whose  doings  hero-worshippers  more  par- 
ticularly dwell — the  rulers  and  generals. 
Xenophon  could  not  have  achieved  his 
celebrated  feat  had  his  Ten  Thousand  been 
feeble,  or  cowardly,  or  insubordinate.  Caesar 
would  never  have  made  his  conquests  without 
disciplined    troops,    inheriting    their    prestige 


140      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OP    THE    BLIND 

and  tactics  and  organization  from  the  Romans 
who  lived  before  them.  And,  to  take  a  recent 
instance,  the  strategical  genius  of  Moltke 
would  have  triumphed  in  no  great  campaigns 
had  there  not  been  a  nation  of  some  forty 
millions  to  supply  soldiers,  and  had  not  those 
soldiers  been  men  of  strong  bodies,  sturdy 
characters,  obedient  natures,  and  capable  of 
carrying  out  orders  intelligently." 

Spencer  concluded: 

"If  you  should  wish  to  understand  these 
phenomena  of  social  evolution,  you  will  not 
do  so  though  you  should  read  yourself  blind 
over  the  biographies  of  all  the  great  rulers  on 
record,  down  to  Frederick  the  Greedy  and 
Napoleon  the  Treacherous." 

The  explosion  of  the  great  man  theory  has 
led  to  absurd  reactions  in  certain  quarters. 
The  stupidity  of  the  man  who  maintains  that 
all  the  processes  of  history  depend  on  great 
men  is  only  equaled  by  the  stupidity  of  those 
who  think  that  every  person  with  unusual 
ability  should  be  knocked  on  the  head  as  a 
menace  to  the  community. 

Because  we  have  discovered  that  the  window 
does  not  produce  the  light,  is  hardly  a  good 
reason  for  throwing  a  brick  through  it.  The 
discovery  that  the  boiler  does  not  generate  the 
steam,  does  not  logically  imply  that  we  should 
punch  a  hole  in  it. 


f 


THOMAS     CARLYLE  141 

The  Socialist  movement  itself  has  surely 
gained  something  from  its  clever  and  able 
men:  Marx,  Engels,  Liebknecht  and  Bebel,  in 
Germany;  Lafargue,  Guesde,  Longuet  and 
Jaures,  in  France ;  Labriola  and  Ferri,  in  Italy ; 
and  a  host  of  the  clearest  thinkers  and  the 
soundest  scholars  of  all  countries. 

"Great"  and  "greatness"  are  words  much  too 
valuable  to  be  thrown  aside  because  they 
happen  to  have  been  associated  with  an 
abandoned  theory. 

We  may  still  say  that  certain  men  or  women 
were  "great"  while  others  were  "small"  with- 
out wrenching  our  philosophy. 

As  to  what  constitutes  "greatness"  in  any 
acceptable  sense  the  following  suggestion  may 
be  of  some  value: 

Throughout  the  history  of  society  men  have 
taken  one  of  two  positions ;  either  they  have 
labored  to  aid  the  progressive  forces  of  evolu- 
tion, or  they  have  lent  their  activities  to  check 
it,  in  the  cause  of  reaction.  By  this  standard 
should  men  be  judged  in  the  twentieth  century. 
The  man  who  in  his  acts  and  words  in- 
carnates social  progress  and  labors  greatly  to 
accelerate  its  processes  may  be  pronounced,  in 
the  name  of  Evolution  and  the  Socialist  phil- 
osophy, to  meet  the  standard  and  requirements 
of  a  really  "great  man." 


vm 

Albert  Schaffle. 

The  most  tremendous  problem  now  con- 
fronting the  bourgeoisie  is  how  to  stem  what 
Schaffle  calls  "the  rising  flood  of  communism." 
Everywhere  its  statesmen  and  politicians,  and 
its  vast  army  of  apologists,  realize  the  increas- 
ing gravity  of  the  situation.  If  one  country 
seems  to  lag  behind  the  rest  in  the  growth  of 
Socialism,  and  its  enemies  begin  to  take  cour- 
age, some  incident  occurs  and  they  learn  they 
have  been  nursing  a  shallow  delusion. 

This  is  precisely  what  happened  in  Eng- 
land. Year  after  year  the  English  press  main- 
tained a  "conspiracy  of  silence"  in  all  that 
related  to  Socialist  propaganda.  A  public 
meeting  so  large  that  it  would  have  received 
three  columns  had  it  been  held  by  any  other 
body  was  ignored  or  dismissed  with  as  many 
lines,  because  it  was  arranged  and  addressed 
by  Socialists.  The  comfortable  and  easy-go- 
ing English  business  man,  reading  his  solemn 
and  stolid  morning  paper  at  the  breakfast 
table,  would  note  the  account  of  lively  Social- 

142 


ALBERT  SCHXFFLE  143 

ist  doings  in  France  or  Germany  and  thank 
God  for  the  English  Channel  which  separated 
him  so  effectively  from  those  restless  and  pecu- 
liar people  on  the  continent.  Of  course,  there 
was  not  or  ever  could  be  any  such  foolishness 
in  England;  if  the  "red  specter"  hovered  over 
the  tight  little  island  his  infallible  paper  would 
warn  him  of  it. 

Then  came  the  Taff  Vale  decision  of  the 
courts,  which  struck  at  the  very  life  of  English 
labor  unions,  and  convinced  every  union  man 
whose  eyes  were  in  his  head  that  the  political 
action  advocated  by  the  Socialists  was  the 
only  effective  reply.  Then  followed  the  gen- 
eral election,  and  England  woke  up  to  find 
over  thirty  "reds"  sitting  in  her  Parliament, 
proposing  measures  from  the  floor  which  had 
previously  been  vainly  begged  for  in  the  lobby. 
The  silence  of  the  press  was  broken;  stunned 
and  bewildered  editors  begged  their  readers 
to  send  in  suggestions  of  the  best  way  to 
stem  "the  rising  flood  of  Socialism"  in  Eng- 
land. 

A  similar  situation  had  arisen  in  Germany 
thirty  years  earlier.  In  1874  the  Gerrnan  So- 
cialists had  unexpected  success  at  the  Reichs- 
tag elections.  The  representatives  of  the  ex- 
isting regime  wailed  in  distress  and  prayed 
for  a  savior. 


X44      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

The  former  Minister  of  Finance  of  Austria, 
Dr.  Albert  Schaffle,  entered  the  arena  and 
undertook  to  show  that  alarm  was  unneces- 
sary. He  began  with  a  series  of  articles 
which  appeared  in  the  "Deutsche  Blatter"  and 
were  later  published  in  book  form  as  "The 
Quintessence  of  Socialism."  When  this  work 
was  translated  into  English  it  was  pronounced 
by  its  English  editor,  Bernard  Bosanquet,  as 
"The  clearest  account  of  Socialism  that  can 
be  obtained  in  anything  like  the  same  com- 
pass." A  few  uncritical  Socialists  have  shown 
a  disposition  to  partially  endorse  this  view. 

True,  Schaffle  in  this  work  takes  Socialism 
seriouly  and  speaks  very  highly  of  its  expon- 
ents. He  recognizes  the  great  ability  of  Marx 
as  displayed  in  "his  bitingly  critical  and  unde- 
niably clear-sighted  work,  'Das  Kapital\"  The 
second  chapter  gives  a  fairly  good  exposition 
of  the  Marxian  theory  of  "Surplus  Value"  and 
throughout  the  book  he  effectively  demolishes 
the  shallower  arguments  which  were  by  many 
supposed  to  dispose  of  the  case  for  Socialism. 

He  explains  that  while  Socialists  regard  the 
capitalist  form  of  wealth  appropriation  as 
robbery,  they  do  not  consider  capitalists  "as 
thieves  in  the  criminal  sense  of  the  word"  nor 
rank  them  "with  the  persons  who  appropriate 
other  people's  belongings  by  the  aid  of  dark 


ALBERT  SCHaFFLE  145 

lanterns  and  false  keys."  Schaffle  enlightens 
those  who  think  that  Socialism  holds  the  cap- 
italist personally  responsible  for  the  evils  of 
capitalism  and  he  quotes  the  following  excel- 
lent passage  from  Marx  in  proof  of  this :  "My 
standpoint,  from  which  the  evolution  of  the 
economic  formation  of  society  is  viewed  as  a 
process  of  natural  history,  can  less  than  any 
other  make  the  individual  responsible  for  rela- 
tions whose  creature  he  socially  remains,  how- 
ever much  he  may  subjectively  raise  himself 
above  them." 

Schaffle  has  no  patience  with  the  shallow- 
pates  who  argue  that  because  Socialists  speak 
of  the  abolition  of  capital,  that  "Socialism  in- 
tends to  have  no  economic  capital,  no  means 
of  production ;  it  proposes  to  produce  without 
land,  factories,  machines,  tools,  raw  material 
or  fuel;  for  it  condemns  capital  and  hence  the 
continuance,  accumulation,  maintenance  and 
renewal  of  the  plant  of  labor."  Schaffle  says, 
"I  must  emphatically  warn  my  readers  against 
this  claSs  of  opponents  to  Socialism,"  and  he 
explains  that  it  is  not  the  instruments  of  pro- 
Suction  that  Socialists  propose  to  abolish,  but 
only  the  "private  ownership"  of  them. 

To  those  who  charge  that  Socialism  would 
destroy  individual  freedom  and  break  up  the 
family,   he   responds:     "There   is   nothing  in 


146      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

the  main  principle  of  abolition  of  private  own- 
ership in  the  means  of  production  which  would 
necessitate  the  disappearance  of  free  demand 
and  free  household  arrangements,  nor  yet  the 
destruction  of  family  life."  He  concludes  his 
argument  against  those  who  think  that  in  a 
Socialist  society  individual  wants  would  be 
suppressed  by  officials,  by  saying,  "There  is, 
on  the  whole,  no  reason  why  in  a  system  of 
united  collective  production  the  wants  of  indi- 
viduals should  be  regulated  by  the  State  or 
limited  by  its  officials." 

Says  Schaffle,  "There  is  another  false  rep- 
resentation which  is  even  more  widely  spread. 
It  is  said  that  the  well-known  defects  of  pub- 
lic administration  today  would  be  universal 
under  Socialism.  This  argument  must  not  be 
relied  on,"  and  he  shows  why  at  some  length. 
One  of  the  things  Socialism  would  do  seems 
to  have  Schaffle's  strong  approval.  He  says: 
"There  would  no  longer  be  a  stock  exchange. 
*  *  *  The  monstrous  actual  abuses  of  public 
and  private  credit  and  the  unclean  brigand- 
aristocracy  of  the  exchange  are  things  which 
it  positively  desires  to  cut  up  by  the  roots." 

Schaffle  believes  that  the  way  to  combat 
Socialism  is  to  attack  it  as  it  is  and  not  set 
up  a  lot  of  straw  effigies  in  order  to  show  how 
easily  they  may  be  overthrown.    He  therefore 


ALBERT  SCHaFFLE  147 

says  toward  the  end  of  this  book:  "Would 
that  people  would  at  least  desist  from  the  dan- 
gerous self-deception  of  attacking  mere  wind- 
mills/' 

Having  cleared  the  ground  of  superficial 
objections,  Schaffle  prepared  to  show  in  a  suc- 
ceeding work  what  were  the  real  difficulties 
of  Social  Democracy  and  how  its  propaganda 
could  be  effectually  checkmated. 

Four  years  later,  in  1878,  he  promised  a 
friend  in  Austria  that  this  work  should  be  at 
once  forthcoming.  Something  took  place  in 
this  year,  however,  which  resulted  in  the  post- 
ponement of  its  appearance. 

Prince  Bismarck  had  arrived  at  the  con- 
clusion that  he  knew  how  to  combat  Social 
Democracy  without  anybody's  advice,  and  he 
proceeded  to  put  his  theories  into  practice 
forthwith.  He  secured  the  passage  of  the 
famous  "Exceptional  Law."  It  was  called  "ex- 
ceptional" because  aimed  at  the  Social  Demo- 
crats alone.  It  was  terribly  drastic  and  in- 
tended to  exterminate  Social  Democracy  in 
Germany.  If  police  government  and  police 
legislation  could  have  done  this  Bismarck 
would  have  succeeded.  As  it  proved,  he  gave 
the  world,  once  and  for  all,  a  perfect  demon- 
stration of  the  utter  futility  of  police  repres- 
sion as  a  weapon  against  Socialism. 


148       TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

Among  other  things,  this  law  provided  that 
anyone  found  to  be  active  in  Socialist  propa- 
ganda was  given  twenty-four  hours  to  get 
across  the  German  boundary  line.  It  was 
observed  that  during  this  period  there  was  a 
notable  increase  in  the  number  of  sick  and 
death  benefit  societies.  This  was  not  easy  to 
account  for,  as  there  was  no  increase  in  the 
mortality  rate,  calling  for  increased  caution, 
neither  did  there  seem  to  be  any  great  wave 
of  "thrift"  to  explain  the  phenomenon. 

It  was  very  difficult  for  strangers  to  gain 
admission  to  the  meetings  of  these  societies, 
but  once  inside  the  mystery  was  solved.  A 
notice  would  appear  to  the  effect  that  the 
"Sons  of  St.  Joseph  Sick  and  Death  Benefit 
Association"  would  hold  its  regular  meeting 
for  the  transaction  of  its  business,  giving  time 
and  place.  When  the  meeting  assembled  and 
its  promoters  were  sure  that  no  police  agents 
were  present,  a  speaker  who  had  been  pre- 
viously appointed  for  that  purpose  would 
mount  his  chair  and  deliver  a  Socialist  address. 
If  news  came  of  the  approach  of  the  police, 
the  speech  ended  as  abruptly  as  it  began  and 
the  officers  of  the  law  were  admitted  in  the 
middle  of  a  discussion  as  to  whether  Fritz 
Schultz,  who  had  been  sick  five  weeks,  was 
entitled  to  benefits  in  view  of  the  fact  that  he 


ALBERT  SCHXFFLE  149 

was  two  months  in  arrears  when  he  was  taken 
ill.  If  they  decided  to  pay  Schultz  under  these 
circumstances,  the  police  would  carry  away 
the  impression  that  "The  Sons  of  St.  Joseph" 
were  a  very  generous  body. 

Those  who  were  caught  and  exiled  found 
refuge  in  London  and  Zurich.  As  it  was  im- 
possible to  publish  a  Socialist  paper  in  Ger- 
many, an  attempt  was  made  to  get  one  in  from 
London,  but  the  first  edition  was  intercepted 
and  confiscated  at  Hamburg.  Then  a  paper 
was  published  at  Zurich  with  Bernstein,  not 
at  that  time  a  revisionist,  as  editor.  It  was 
printed  on  very  fine  paper  and  circulated  in 
Germany  in  sealed  envelopes.  As  Bismarck 
had  closed  up  all  other  Socialist  papers,  in- 
cluding the  muddled  publications  of  petty  busi- 
ness men  who  imagined  they  were  Socialists 
and  preached  a  Socialism  of  their  own,  this 
one  paper,  edited  by  a  Marxian  scholar,  was 
the  only  paper  read  during  this  period  by  the 
Socialists  of  Germany  and  this  is  one  of  the 
reasons  why  they  came  out  of  the  persecu- 
tion with  greater  clearness  of  view  and  soli- 
darity of  aim  than  when  they  went  in.  Writ- 
ing just  after  the  repeal  of  the  "Exceptional 
Law"  in  1890,  SchafHe  says:  "There  has 
probably  never  before  been  an  instance  of  so 
comprehensive    a    revolutionary    idea    repre- 


150      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OP    THE    BLIND 

sented  by  so  great,  so  well  organized,  so  ably 
conducted  a  party  as  Social  Democracy  became 
after  twelve  years  of  exceptional  legislation. " 

Schaffle  had  promised  his  friend  in  Austria 
to  refute  Social  Democracy  in  1878,  but  the 
attempt  did  not  appear  until  six  years  later, 
in  1884.     He  gives  two  reasons  for  this  delay. 

First,  "The  Quintessence,,  had  stood  for  two 
days  on  the  index  of  the  "exceptional  law"  as 
a  prohibited  book.  Its  tone  of  fairness  had 
led  Herr  Von  Quadt,  a  member  of  the  admin- 
istration at  Oppeln,  to  regard  it  as  a  mild 
form  of  advocacy.  Schaffle  felt  that  if  he  then 
published  his  broadside  attack  on  Socialism 
he  would  be  thought  to  have  been  intimidated 
by  the  government.  His  second  reason  for 
delay  he  states  as  follows:  "In  yet  another 
direction  I  was  thwarted  at  that  time  by  the 
German  Socialist  legislation.  It  had  the  effect 
of  a  muzzling  order;  it  bound  down  the  Social 
Democracy  so  fast,  when  strictly  enforced, 
that  it  could  not  even  rattle  its  chain,  still  less 
bark  or  bite  or  repulse  an  attack  —  greatly  to 
the  profit  of  the  'Freisinnige'  (one  of  the  rad- 
ical parties),  who  immediately  proceeded  to 
bark  and  try  to  bite  more  vigorously  than 
before.  It  is  not  my  way,  however,  to  fall 
upon  an  opponent  the  moment  the  gag  is  on 
his  mouth-" 


ALBERT   SCHaFFLB  151 

Writing  of  six  years  later,  he  says:  "The 
Social  Democracy  is  once  more  upon  the  ros- 
trum, *  *  *  once  more  it  preaches  in  a  tone 
confident  of  victory,  'the  alteration  of  the  whole 
system/  The  aim  and  end  of  the  'Quintes- 
sence' is  attained.  The  world  knows  now  from 
many  other  sources  what  Social  Democracy 
means.  But  what  the  world  even  yet  does  not 
by  any  means  know,  is  how  this  Socialism 
is  to  be  met  and  combatted,  both  critically 
and  practically." 

Therefore,  in  order  that  the  world  might 
know  how  "this  Socialism  was  to  be  met  and 
combatted,  both  critically  and  practically/' 
Schaffle  took  up  his  chivalrous  pen  and  wrote 
"The  Impossibility  of  Social  Democracy." 

It  is  impossible  to  read  both  these  works 
without  detecting  the  changed  tone  of  the  sec- 
ond volume.  Our  author  is  no  longer  scrupu- 
lously anxious  to  be  fair  and  he  hurls  at  Social 
Democracy  charges  against  which  he  himself 
had  defended  it  in  his  first  work.  The  prob- 
able explanation  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the 
fact,  which  he  greatly  bemoans,  that  many  of 
his  best  friends,  following  the  error  of  the 
government  in  their  estimate  of  "Quintes- 
sence," had  held  him  to  have  become  a  traitor 
to  his  class  —  a  Social  Democrat.  His  mani- 
fest anxiety  to  dispel  this  illusion  is  plainly 


152      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

responsible  for  the  deterioration  of  his  style 
in  the  second  book. 

The  "Impossibility"  is  more  than  twice  the 
size  of  "Quintessence"  and  takes  the  form  of 
three  letters  written  to  his  friend  in  Austria. 
The  friend's  name  is  not  given,  but  the  letters 
show  that  he  was  a  very  backward  old  gentle- 
man on  all  social  questions  and  Schaffle  is 
anxious  to  convince  him  that  where  Socialism 
is  concerned  he  himself  is  no  less  conserva- 
tive. By  the  time  we  close  the  second  vol- 
ume we  know  that  they  were  a  very  pretty 
pair  of  "old  fogies." 

The  first  of  the  three  letters  which  consti- 
tute the  "Impossibility"  is  entitled,  "Charac- 
teristics of  Social  Democracy."  It  is  evidently 
intended  to  supplement  and  complete  the  de- 
scription already  given  in  the  "Quintessence." 
The  second  letter  is  called,  "Criticism  of  Social 
Democracy,"  and  the  third  and  last,  which  is 
longer  than  the  two  others  combined,  "The 
Positive  Method  of  Combatting  Social  Democ- 
racy." 

In  the  "Quintessence"  Schaffle  had  confined 
his  examination  of  Socialism  to  its  economic 
and  social  aspects,  leaving  its  philosophical 
side  strictly  alone.  His  English  editor,  Bosan- 
quet,  agreed  with  his  economics  and  greatly 
praised  the  work. 


ALBERT  SCHaFFLB  158 

In  the  first  chapter  of  the  "Impossibility," 
however,  SchafHe  ventures  to  explain  the  phi- 
losophical ancestry  of  Socialism.  In  this  at- 
tempt he  makes  the  one  greatest  blunder  it 
was  possible  to  make,  thereby  revealing  his 
total  and  colossal  incapacity  in  the  field  of 
philosophy,  and  Bosanquet  is  properly  dis- 
gusted. 

Nobody  denies  that  the  Socialist  philosophy 
finds  its  roots  in  the  work  of  Hegel.  As  this 
will  be  the  theme  of  a  future  lecture  we  will 
pass  it  quickly  here.  The  merest  tyro  in  phi- 
losophy knows  that  Hegel's  work  fell  into  two 
divisions  —  the  "system"  and  the  "dialectic." 
In  his  "system"  he  is  an  idealist.  When  he 
comes  to  develop  a  philosophy  of  history  and 
a  criticism  of  social  institutions  he  breaks 
away  from  his  own  idealism  and  adopts  a 
dialectic,  evolutionary  method,  which  is  its 
complete  contradiction. 

This  split  Hegel's  disciples  into  two  wings 
—  "right"  and  "left."  The  right  wing  defended 
the  idealism  of  his  system  and  became  reac- 
tionary. The  left  wing  championed  his  "dia- 
lectic" and  became  revolutionary.  This  dia- 
lectic, in  the  hands  of  Marx,  finally  became 
"the  materialistic  conception  of  history." 
Thus  Schaffle  was  right  in  tracing  Socialism 
back  to  Hegel,  but  he  makes  the  stupid  blum 


151      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

der  of  placing  Marx  in  the  idealist  right  wing! 

Speaking  of  Socialism,  Schaffle  says:  "Its 
philosophy  is  in  reality  the  offspring  of  the 
subjective  speculation  of  Hegel.  *  *  *  Even  a 
superficial  acquaintance  with  Hegel's  teach- 
ings makes  it  clear  that  his  system  of  philoso- 
phy lends  itself  very  readily  to  Socialism." 

The  word  "superficial"  in  the  last  sentence 
is  made  the  occasion  for  a  footnote  by  Bosan- 
quet,  which  consists  of  the  derisive  exclama- 
tion, "Just  so!"  The  explanation  of  his  deri- 
sion is  to  be  found  in  his  editorial  preface, 
where  he  regrets  Schaffle's  "countenancing  the 
ridiculous  fallacy  which  derives  Socialism 
from  the  idealism  of  Hegel." 

A  blunder  of  this  proportion,  committed  in 
the  opening  chapter,  while  it  probably  did  not 
shake  the  faith  of  his  uncritical  Austrian 
friend,  went  far  to  discredit  the  whole  volume 
in  the  estimation  of  the  more  scholarly,  Bosan- 
quet  included. 

The  closing  pages  of  the  first  chapter  deal 
with  the  difference  between  two  kinds  of  So- 
cialism: Communistic  Socialism,  which  says 
"from  each  according  to  his  ability,  to  each 
according  to  his  needs" ;  and  Proportional  So- 
cialism, which  proposes  to  proportion  the  re- 
ward to  the  labor  performed.  The  contempla- 
tion of  the  communistic  formula  brings  on  a 


LBERT  SCHAFFLE  155 

burst  of  righteous  indignation  which  finds 
expression  as  follows :  "The  appropriation  by 
the  Society  of  the  results  of  unequally  produc- 
tive labor  for  a  uniformly  equal  distribution 
according  to  needs  is  a  universal  and  mon- 
strous appropriation  by  one  set  of  persons  of 
the  surplus  value  belonging  to  others." 

He  closes  the  chapter  by  announcing  that 
he  will  take  as  the  basis  of  his  criticism  "that 
Proportional  Social  Democracy  which  is  alone 
conceivable  in  practical  working." 

He  opens  his  second  and  critical  chapter  by 
waiving  for  the  present  his  Austrian  friend's 
request  for  a  treatment  of  the  relation  of 
Socialism  to  Christianity,  saying:  "We  must 
first  clear  up  the  industrial  side  of  Socialism." 
He  paves  the  way  for  this  performance  with 
the  following  excellent  statement:  "Social 
Democracy  as  a  party  is  the  party  of  the  pro- 
letariat. To  their  social  inclinations  and  long- 
ings its  whole  teaching,  its  whole  agitation, 
is  expressly  suited.  Collective  production  is 
to  fulfill  the  very  desires  of  their  hearts,  it  is 
to  overthrow  the  capitalists  and  rid  the  world 
of  business  crises  and  wage  slavery." 

So  much  for  the  aims  of  Social  Democracy. 
As  to  whether  they  can  be  realized,  he  gives 
his  Austrian  correspondent  the  following  as- 
surance:   "I,  for  my  part,  hope  to  be  able  to 


156      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS     OF'  THE    BLIND 

bring  you  striking  proof  that  Social  Democ- 
racy, in  all  its  democracy  and  in  all  its  radi- 
calism, can  never  fulfill  a  single  one  of  all  its 
glowing  promises ;  and,  further,  that  each  and 
all  of  the  preliminary  points  above  mentioned, 
over  which  its  fanatics  rave  so  wildly,  will, 
if  rightly  considered,  afford  evidence  of  the 
impossibility   of   Democratic    Collectivism." 

Schaffle  then  proceeds  to  propound  ten  rea- 
sons why  Social  Democracy  is  and  must  for- 
ever be  impossible.  Some  of  them  are  very 
interesting.  This  is  the  first:  "It  is,  to  begin 
with,  a  delusion  to  imagine  that  collective  pro- 
duction could  be  organized  and  administered 
at  all  in  a  republic  which  from  base  to  summit 
of  the  social  pyramid  was  reared  on  demo- 
cratic principles."  As  an  objection  to  Social- 
ism, this  will  rather  startle  the  American 
reader,  who  believes,  or  thinks  he  believes,  in 
democratic  principles  —  not  meaning  here  the 
principles  (?)  of  the  Democratic  Party.  It  is 
necessary  to  remember  that  Schaffle  elsewhere 
describes  himself  as  a  "monarchist"  and  that 
he  maintains  that  Socialism  can  not  succeed 
because  it  will  lack  the  effective  authority  of 
a  King.  This  is  another  of  the  criticisms 
which  called  forth  the  disdain  of  his  English 
editor. 

"In  the  second  place,"  says  Schaffle,  "Col- 


ALBERT  SCHAFFLE  I57 

lectivism  eliminates  both  nature  and  private 
property  as  determining  factors  from  the  prob- 
lem of  the  distribution  of  income."  This  notion 
shows  that  notwithstanding  his  denunciation 
of  them  in  "Quintessence,"  Schaffle  had  "wind- 
mills" of  his  own.  Marx  insisted  on  the  rec- 
ognition of  Nature  as  a  source  of  wealth  and 
Socialism  proposes  to  distribute  wealth  on  the 
basis  of  "private  property,"  according  to  ser- 
vice rendered. 

His  third  objection  is  that  "Social  Democ- 
racy promises  an  impossibility"  in  undertak- 
ing to  unite  all  forms  of  industry  into  one 
great  unwieldy  body,  whereas  some  of  them, 
such  as  agriculture,  may  need  to  be  left  in 
local  self-complete  branches.  To  which  it  is 
a  sufficient  answer  to  say  that  Socialism  has 
not  decided  on  anything  of  the  kind,  and  that 
this  is  Social  Democracy  according  to  Schaffle 
and  not  according  to  Socialists. 

Fourth,  "Social  Democracy  promises  to. the 
industrial  proletariat  a  fabulous  increase  in 
the  net  result  of  national  production."  He  is 
willing  to  concede  that  "This  increased  pro- 
ductivity of  industry  would  perhaps  be  con- 
ceivable if  a  firm  administration  could  be  set 
over  the  collective  production."  By  "firm  ad- 
ministration" he  means,  of  course,  a  'king'." 
Schaffle  could  not  conceive  that  the  develop- 


158      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

ment  of  machinery  might  go  on  after  the  mon- 
archy had  disappeared. 

"The  fifth,  and  the  most  one-sided  promise" 
of  Socialism,  which  promises  the  workers  a 
reward  equal  to  the  exact  value  of  his  labor 
"is  a  pure  delusion." 

This  is  a  pure  delusion  because  "It  is  wholly 
impossible  to  decide  how  much  is  contributed 
by  labor  and  how  much  by  capital  to  the  value 
and  .amount  of  the  joint  product;  for  the 
product  is  the  indivisible  result  of  the  joint 
work  of  capital,  labor  and  the  gratuitous  co- 
operation of  nature." 

This  is  a  pretty  example  of  Schaffle's  back- 
handed reasoning.  He  uses  "capital"  here  as 
being  synonymous  with  "capitalist,"  which  is 
quite  correct.  But  he  is  criticising  a  society 
in  which  there  would  be  neither  capital  nor 
capitalist,  for  when  the  instruments  of  pro- 
duction become  social  property  they  cease  to 
be  capital,  and  for  the  same  reason  the  cap- 
italist is  abolished,  although,  of  course,  the 
"man"  who  was  a  capitalist  remains.  There- 
fore, in  a  Socialist  society,  the  instruments  of 
production  will  be  on  the  same  footing  as 
nature;  they  will  contribute  to  the  produc- 
tion of  wealth  "gratuitously"  and,  like  nature, 
will  make  no  trouble  about  the  settlement  of 
any  claims.    All  that  will  be  necessary  will 


ALBERT  SCHaPFLE  159 

be  to  maintain  and  increase  their  efficiency, 
just  as  the  same  may  be  necessary  in  the  case 
of  nature  by  developing  fisheries,  etc. 

Difficulty  six  is  that,  even  if  the  trouble 
about  the  proper  share  of  capital  and  nature 
should  be  overcome  there  would  still  remain 
the  impossible  task  of  finding  out  the  precise 
share  of  each  individual  laborer.  As  this  is 
the  same  objection  that  is  raised  as  number 
eight  we  will  take  them  together.  Under 
number  eight  he  says:  "The  private  capital- 
ist, of  course,  could  no  longer  exploit  the 
wage  laborer,  since  all  private  capital  would 
be  over  and  done  with.  But  laborer  could  very 
really  exploit  laborer." 

There  may  be  some  truth  to  this  contention, 
for  example :  If  two  men  worked  a  day  of  the 
same  length  and  produced  an  amount  o£ 
wealth  equivalent  to,  let  us  say,  twenty  dol- 
lars. But  one  man  worked  more  effectively 
than  the  other  and  he  produced  of  this  value, 
let  us  say,  $10.25,  while  the  other  only  pro- 
duced a  value  of  $9.75.  Therefore,  if  each  is 
paid  at  the  rate  of  $10  the  most  effective 
laborer  would  be  "exploited"  25  cents.  If  the 
difference  became  much  greater  than  this  it 
would  be  detectable  and  could  be  adjusted. 

This  terrible  injustice  weighs  heavily  on  the 
sensitive  feelings  of  the  justice-loving  doctor. 


100      TEN    BLIND    LEADERS    OF    THE    BLIND 

He  has  no  such  heart-rending  laments  about 
the  existing  social  order,  where  one  man  works 
a  day  to  produce  $10  and  instead  of  being 
overpaid  with  $10.25,  or  underpaid  with  $9.75, 
he  receives  less  than  $2,  while  more  than  $8 
goes,  not  to  another  laborer  who  has  worked 
harder,  but  to  an  idle  loafer  who  has  not 
worked  at  all. 

Instead  of  weeping  over  this  crying  robbery 
of  the  present,  Schaffle  saves  his  crocodile 
tears  for  the  camel-hair  injustices  of  Social 
Democracy. 

Objection  seven,  which  is  sliced  between 
these  two,  is  that  if  a  fair  distribution  could 
be  established  somebody  would  want  to  change 
it.  He  says:  "The  consistent  stickler  for 
equality  and  practical  brotherhood  would  de- 
mand a  distribution  to  the  weak  also,  accord- 
ing to  their  needs."  And,  be  it  remembered 
here,  that  Schaffle  is  as  orthodox  a  Christian 
as  he  is  a  monarchist,  and  that  a  little  later  he 
makes  a  great  noise  about  the  atheism  of 
Social  Democracy. 

But,  he  maintains,  as  a  result  of  these  stick- 
lers for  "practical  brotherhood"  (Social  Dem- 
ocratic atheists,  if  it  please  you),  these  defend- 
ers of  the  weak,  behaving  in  this  ridiculous 
fashion,  "Everything  would  get  out  of  hand 
and   a   hopeless   confusion   would   ensue,   the 


ALBERT  SCHAFFLE  161 

only  way  out  of  the  difficulty  being  to  declare 
a  universal  equality  of  need.,,  And  this,  quoth 
our  good  Christian  doctor,  is  "a  solution  most 
unjust,  most  wearisome,  and  most  conducive 
to  idleness.,, 

We  have  already  dealt  with  objection  eight 
in  conjunction  with  objection  six.  Nine  and 
ten  call  for  no  extended  consideration,  being 
mere  denials  of  Socialism's  ability  to  fulfill 
its  promises  to  avoid  panics  and  abolish  all 
exploitation  of  labor. 

What  Schaffle  wants  instead  of  "practical 
brotherhood"  is  the  capitalist,  a  little  more 
considerate,  and  the  wage  laborer  a  little  bet- 
ter cared  for,  and  the  weak  treated  to  doles  of 
charity. 

This  pious  old  person  would  hardly  find 
life  worth  living  if  he  could  not  have  some 
unfortunate  soul  to  whom  he  could  give  his 
small  change,  thereby  keeping  his  Christian 
virtues  in  practice  —  some  aged  woman,  thinly 
clad,  sitting  on  the  frozen  pavement,  shiver- 
ing in  the  blast,  with  lead  pencils  in  one  hand 
and  a  tin  cup  in  the  other. 


IX. 

August  Comte. 

The  appearance  of  August  Comte  marks  the 
final  collapse  of  philosophy  and  the  long-hin- 
dered triumph  of  Science.  For  twenty-five 
centuries  they  had  struggled  side  by  side,  phi- 
losophy proud  of  her  supposed  superiority, 
holding  her  head  in  the  clouds  and  occasion- 
ally looking  pityingly  down  upon  science,  hum- 
bly grovelling  on  the  ground. 

But  pride  was  only  the  forerunner  of  a  fall, 
and  the  lowly  was  at  last  exalted.  Slowly  but 
surely  the  truth  dawned  in  the  minds  of  men 
that  philosophy  was  a  rudderless  ship  on  an 
uncharted  sea,  with  neither  port  of  embar- 
kation nor  possibility  of  reaching  any  destina- 
tion. .Meanwhile  science  forged  ahead,  solv- 
ing one  by  one  the  riddles  of  the  universe, 
directing  her  course  by  the  unchanging  stars 
and  drawing  all  men  unto  her. 

Then  science,  graciously  forgetting  past 
amenities,  endowed  her  humbled  sister  with 
a  new  function  and  set  her  forth  upon  a  new 
and  glorious  career.     No  more  should  philos- 

162 


AUGUST    COMTE  163 

ophy  dissipate  her  energy  speculating  about 
the  unknown  and  building  castles  sans  foun- 
dations; now  she  should  take  the  precious 
truths  science  had  gleaned  and  systematize 
them  into  a  unity. 

Among  the  first  philosophers  to  undertake 
this  task  and  lead  philosophy  forth  on  her 
new  mission  was  August  Comte.  With  him 
philosophy  is  the  philosophy  of  the  sciences; 
the  synthesis,  the  unification  of  all  science  in 
one  all-embracing  system.  What  each  science 
did  for  the  facts  in  its  own  domain  —  classify 
and  arrange  them  —  philosopbhy  should  now 
do  for  all  the  sciences,  each  science  constitut- 
ing a  single  fact  in  the  subject  matter  of  "the 
science  of  the  sciences." 

This  establishment  of  philosophy  as  the  sci- 
ence of  the  sciences  marked  a  turning  point  in 
human  thought  which  has  been  revolutionary 
in  its  consequences. 

Comte  has  contributed  two  things  to  mod- 
ern knowledge  that  mark  him  as  a  great 
thinker  and  will  give  him  a  place  among  the 
immortals ;  his  analysis  of  the  intellectual  de- 
velopment of  the  race,  and  his  classification  of 
the  sciences.  He  appears  in  this  catalogue  of 
"Blind  Leaders  of  the  Blind"  because  of  the 
puerility  of  his  ideas  in  the  domain  of  sociol- 
ogy, of  which  science  he  is  the  reputed  founder, 


164        TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

and  his  fatuous  effort  to  saddle  the  world  with 
a  new  religion.  As  Comte's  merits,  however, 
overshadow  these  defects,  this  lecture  will  be 
largely  appreciative. 

Comte's  division  of  the  intellectual  develop- 
ment of  man  into  three  stages  slWs  light  in 
many  dark  places  for  the  student  who  meets 
with  it  for  the  first  time.  One  phase  of  Com- 
tek position  on  this  question  seems  like  an 
anticipation  of  the  discovery  made  in  another 
field,  later  in  the  century,  by  Ernest  Haeckel. 
So  closely  related  do  these  two  ideas  seem 
that  tr^ey  serve  to  illustrate  each  other.  As 
Haeckers  theory  applies,  at  least  mainly,  to 
the  story  of  the  body,  while  Comte's  deals 
exclusively  with  the  mind,  Comte's  priority  in 
discovery  seems  to  reverse  the  natural  order, 
psychology  being  one  of  the  later  sciences  to 
give  up  its  truths. 

As  an  understanding  of  Haeckers  theory 
paves  the  way  for  a  proper  appreciation  of 
Comte,  we  will  take  Haeckel  first. 

Haeckel  calls  his  discovery  the  "Biogenetic 
Principle."  It  is  deduced  from  a  comparison 
of  two  sciences,  ontogeny  and  phylogeny. 
Phylogeny  deals  with  the  history  of  the  devel- 
opment of  the  species  —  the  race.  As  this 
history  is  contained  chiefly  in  the  fossils  that 
have   been   preserved   in   geological   strata  — 


AUGUST    COMTE  165 

the  crust  of  the  earth  —  it  falls  under  the  head 
of  palaeontology  —  the  science  that  deals  with 
the  fossil  remains  of  organic  life ;  —  it  is  palae- 
ontological  history. 

Ontogeny,  on  the  other  hand,  deals  with  the 
life  history  of  the  individual ;  beginning  at 
conception,  and  dealing  mainly  with  the  em- 
bryo as  it  develops  before  birth.  Haeckel's 
theory  consists  of  the  now  proven  fact  that 
these  two  developments  go  over  the  same 
ground.  All  the  stages  and  phases  that  the 
race  has  passed  through  before  it  reached  the 
human,  are  briefly  reproduced  during  the  nine 
months'  embryonic  period  before  birth  —  the 
whole  story,  with  paragraphs  omitted  and  the 
chapters  condensed,  is  repeated  in  those  few 
months.  As  Haeckel  states  it:  "The  history 
of  the  individual  development,  or  ontogeny,  is 
a  short  and  quick  recapitulation  of  the  slow 
and  gradual  palaeontological  development,  or 
phylogeny. 

Professor  Bolsche,  one  of  Haeckers  most 
brilliant  contemporaries  in  the  same  field,  who 
has  expounded  Haeckers  theory  in  "The  Evo- 
lution of  Man"  —  a  very  treasure-trove  of  pop-* 
ular  evolutionary  science  —  says  on  page  96 : 
"The  biogenetic  law  recognizes  in  the  embryo 
the  portrait  of  its  ancestor." 

Again  says  Bolsche :    "No  matter  what  em- 


16G        TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

bryo  we  may  study,  whether  it  is  that  of  a 
lizard,  a  snake,  a  crocodile,  a  turtle,  ostrich, 
stork,  chicken,  canary,  duckbill,  marsupial, 
whale,  rabbit,  horse,  or  finally  a  long-tailed 
American  monkey  or  anthropoid  (man-like) 
gibbon  —  the  embryo  at  a  certain  stage  of  its 
development  always  shows  a  perceptible  tad- 
pole or  fish  stage.  Its  neck  shows  the  mark 
of  the  gills.  Furthermore,  the  limbs  which 
the  embryos  are  just  forming  at  this  stage 
have  likewise  the  plain  outlines  of  fins." 

All  of  which  proves  that  if  the  great  Greek 
Anaximander  was  only  guessing  two  thou-1 
sand  five  hundred  years  ago,  he  was  guessing 
very  shrewdly  when  he  said:  "Man  is  like 
another  animal,  namely,  a  fish,  in  the  begin- 
ning." 

Haeckel  justly  regarded  this  biogenetic  law 
or  principle  as  a  clinching  proof  of  the  descent 
of  man  from  other  forms  and  he  triumphantly 
declares:  "No  opponent  of  the  Theory  of 
Descent  has  been  able  to  give  an  explanation 
of  this  extremely  wonderful  fact  whereas  it  is 
perfectly  explained  according  to  the  Theory 
of  Descent  (evolution)  by  the  laws  of  inher- 
itance and  adaptation." 

This  is  not  the  place  for  further  exposition 
of  this  theory,  but  the  more  it  is  examined  the 
greater  becomes  its  significance  and  the  more 


AUGUST    COMTE  167 

are  we  disposed  to  admire  the  intellect  that 
worked  it  out. 

If  one  has  read  Haeckel  before  Comte  it  is 
something  of  a  surprise  to  find  that  what 
appears  to  be  the  most  ingenious  part  of  the 
theory  had  already  been  applied  in  another 
direction  by  the  brilliant  Frenchman.  While 
we  cannot  for  a  moment  forget  the  tremen- 
dous and  wholesome  part  which  Haeckel  has 
played  in  the  intellectual  life  of  the  modern 
world,  it  may  be  conceded  that  in  originality 
the  French  philosopher  was  his  master. 

Comte  begins  by  dividing  the  intellectual 
history  of  mankind  into  three  periods,  the 
theological,  the  metaphysical,  and  the  positive. 
The  "theological"  period  covers  the  mental 
infancy  of  man;  the  "metaphysical"  begins 
when  the  human  mind  emerges  from  its  cruder 
superstitions  and  philosophy  assumes  com- 
mand, and  ends  with  the  downfall  of  philoso- 
phy before  the  onslaughts  of  science.  The 
"positive"  period  is  contemporary  with  the 
reign  of  science  and  the  scientific  method. 

The  word  "positive"  is  used  by  Comte  in 
the  common  sense  of  something  we  are  sure 
of,  or  positive  about,  and  refers  to  the  scien- 
tific method  of  experimentation  and  demon- 
stration. 

Any  attempt  to  fix  definite  dates  at  which 


163        TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

any  one  of  these  periods  began  or  ended — > 
especially  ended  —  would  be  contrary  to  the 
spirit  of  Comte's  conception.  Between  them 
there  is  a  borderland  of  transition  as  shadowy 
and  uncertain  as  that  between  the  inorganic 
and  the  organic,  or  between  the  plant  or  ani- 
mal kingdoms. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  overlapping  which, 
however,  is  caused  mainly  by  the  former 
stages  lingering  on  in  the  latter,  though  occa- 
sionally this  is  reversed  when  a  later  stage 
reaches  back  into  the  former  in  the  case  of 
some  thinker  who  anticipated  the  future.  The 
principal  overlapping,  however,  is  caused  by 
metaphysical  ideas  living  on  in  a  scientific 
age,  and  theological  beliefs  being  artificially 
galvanized  into  an  appearance  of  life  long 
after  the  breath  has  left  their  bodies,  by  an 
army  of  reactionaries  paid  for  the  perform- 
ance. These  outworn  myths  appear  in  the 
twentieth  century  as  stone  implements  were 
still  in  use  in  the  bronze  age  and  horse-cars 
still  run  in  the  city  of  New  York. 

This  "Theory  of  Human  and  Social  Devel- 
opment,,,  as  Comte  styles  it,  is  thus  described 
by  him : 

"It  lays  down,  as  is  generally  known,  that 
our  speculations  upon  all  subjects  whatso- 
ever, pass  necessarily  through  three  successive 


AUGUST    COMTE  169 

stages:  the  Theological  stage,  in  which  free 
play  is  given  to  fictions  admitting  of  no  proof; 
the  Metaphysical  stage,  characterized  by  the 
prevalence  of  personified  abstractions  or  enti- 
ties; lastly,  the  Positive  stage,  based  upon  an 
exact  view  of  the  real  facts  of  the  case.  The 
first,  though  purely  provisional,  is  invariably 
the  point  from  which  we  start;  the  third  is 
the  only  permanent  or  normal  state;  the  sec- 
ond has  but  a  modifying  or  rather  a  solvent 
influence,  which  qualifies  it  for  regulating  the 
transition  from  the  first  stage  to  the  third. 
We  begin  with  theological  Imagination,  thence 
we  pass  through  metaphysical  Discussion,  and 
we  end  at  last  with  positive  Demonstration. 
Thus  by  means  of  this  one  general  law  we  are 
enabled  to  take  a  comprehensive  and  simul- 
taneous view  of  the  past,  present  and  future 
of  Humanity." 

The  point  wherein  this  luminous  theory  of 
Comte's  resembles  the  later  one  of  Haeckel  is 
this:  Comte  maintains  that  this  order  of  the 
intellectual  development  is  reproduced  in  the 
mental  development  of  the  individual. 

Says  Comte:  "The  progress  of  the  indi- 
vidual mind  is  not  only  an  illustration,  but  an 
indirect  evidence  of  that  of  the  general  mind. 
The  point  of  departure  of  the  individual  and 
the  race  being  the   same,  the  phases   of  the 


170        TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE   BLIND 

mind  of  man  correspond  to  the  epochs  of  the 
mind  of  the  race.  Now  each  of  us  is  aware, 
if  he  looks  back  upon  his  own  history,  that 
he  was  a  theologian  in  his  childhood,  a  meta- 
physician in  his  youth  and  a  natural  philoso- 
pher in  his  manhood.  All  men  who  are  up  to 
their  age  can  verify  this  for  themselves.,, 

This  analogy  of  Comte's  is  usually  regarded 
as  merely  fanciful  and  suggestive,  deriving 
whatever  force  it  has  from  the  facts  often  or 
usually  being  as  the  theory  implies.  This 
attitude  is  probably  largely  justified  by  the 
probability  that  we  are  approaching  a  time 
when  theological  thinking,  at  any  rate,  will 
be  eliminated  from  the  mental  life-story  of  the 
individual  —  when  we  shall  teach  our  children 
the  truth  in  the  first  place,  and  if  Adam  and 
Eve  are  to  be  retained  as  characters  they  shall 
occupy  their  proper  places  as  co-equals  of 
Jack  the  Giant-killer  and  the  venerable  King 
Cole.  And  yet  it  would  seem  that  Haeckers 
theory  not  only  resembles  Comte's  in  this  par-* 
ticular  but  also  provides  a  physical  basis  for  it. 

According  to  Haeckel,  a  child  in  its  infancy 
is,  in  its  body,  nearer  by  thousands  of  years 
to  our  primitive  ancestors  than  is  the  adult. 
This  being  so,  the  brain,  being  a  physical 
organ,  is  of  course  involved.  Thus  a  child, 
having  the  brain  of  this  primitive  order,  would 


AUGUST    COMTE  171 

only  be  able  to  apprehend,  by  reason  of  that 
limitation,  the  theological  superstitions  which 
so  firmly  gripped  our  prehistoric  progenitors. 

Later  research  may  prove  that  it  is  just  as 
well  to  feed  the  child  mind  on  fairy-tales,  but, 
of  course,  it  will  never  justify  our  insistence 
on  any  of  them  being  solemnly  regarded  as 
truths  in  later  years.  Whatever  may  ulti- 
mately prove  to  be  the  truth  in  this  particular 
the  main  generalization,  which  states  the  three 
successive-  stages  of  human  mental  develop- 
ment, stands  impregnable. 

We  shall  return  to  this  theory  later  for  we 
have  by  no  means  exhausted  its  significance, 
but  we  shall  do  so  in  connection  with  Comte's 
second  great  contribution  to  modern  thought 
— »the  classification  of  the  sciences. 

Readers  of  Herbert  Spencer,  unfamiliar  with 
Comte,  would  find  in  the  latter  more  than  one 
anticipation  of  important  features  of  the  Syn- 
thetic Philosophy.  As  Lester  F.  Ward  has 
successfully  contended,  Spencer  rebutting  to 
the  contrary  notwithstanding,  Comte's  and 
Spencer's  classification  of  the  sciences  are  fun- 
damentally the  same.  Comte's  idea  was  to 
arrange  the  sciences  in  an  order  which  would 
proceed  from  the  simple  to  the  complex;  from 
the  general  to  the  particular.  Disciples  of 
Spencer  will  recognize  this  conception. 


172        TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE   BLIND 

Here  is  the  order  as  it  appears  in  Comte's 
Phiosophy : 

(1)  Astronomy. 

|   (2)  Physics. 

(3)  Chemistry. 

(4)  Biology. 

(5)  Sociology. 

(6)  Ethics. 

Those  who  do  not  find  ethics  enumerated 
in  "The  Positive  Philosophy"  are  reminded 
that  he  made  this  addition  in  his  "Politique 
Positive."  , 

The  details  of  a  comparison  of  this  order 
with  Spencer's  would  take  far  too  much  space 
here  and  the  reader  who  wishes  further  infor- 
mation on  this  head  will  do  well  to  consult 
Lester  F.  Ward's  "Pure  Sociology,"  pages 
66-67. 

In  the  above  list  mathematics  is  sometimes 
given  at  the  head  —  before  astronomy.  And 
Comte  himself  sometimes  names  them  in  that 
way,  but  he  is  careful  to  make  clear  that  he 
does  not  regard  mathematics  as  a  separate  sci- 
ence but  rather  as  the  method  and  founda- 
tion of  all  the  sciences.  Thus  his  "hierarchy" 
of  the  sciences  really  begins  with  astronomy. 

A  careful  consideration  of  this  classifica- 
tion shows  that  each  succeeding  science  grows 


AUGUST    COMTE  173 

out  of  the  one  that  precedes  it  and  is  depend- 
ent on  it  as  a  child  on  its  mother. 

Astronomy  deals  with  celestial  bodies  and 
the  laws  relating  to  them  and  includes  Phys- 
ics, which  deals  with  molar  forces,  just  as 
Physics  includes  chemistry,  which  deals  with 
molecular  forces.  In  the  natural  order  of 
things  all  these  come  before  life,  which  is  the 
subject  of  biology.  Mind  is  a  later  manifesta- 
tion of  life  and  although  it  is  not  separately 
listed  as  Spencer  lists  it  under  the  head  of 
Psychology,  it  is  fully  treated  as  a  department 
of  biology  —  cerebral  biology.  Later,  social 
life  appears  and  becomes  the  foundation  of 
Sociology,  and  moral  relations  accumulate  and 
give  birth  to  the  latest  member  of  the  series, 
Ethics. 

Another  theory  which  Comte  regards  as  im- 
portant and  for  which  he  claims  complete 
originality  is  as  follows:  The  three  principal 
methods  of  science  are  observation,  experi- 
ment, comparison.  As  we  proceed  in  Comte's 
hierarchy  from  Astronomy  at  the  beginning 
to  Ethics  at  the  end  there  is,  as  Comte  argues, 
a  progressive  application  of  these  methods  of 
research.  In  Astronomy,  the  most  general 
and  simple  of  the  sciences,  observation  alone 
is  available;  in  Physics,  which  comes  next, 
experimentation  is  possible  as  well  as  obser- 


174        TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

vation.  When  we  reach  chemistry,  experi- 
ment is  the  chief  weapon,  while  in  biology, 
sociology  and  ethics  we  depend  mainly  on 
comparison. 

Comte  made  some  very  striking  blunders, 
due  to  his  great  self-confidence  and  the  limita- 
tions of  his  age.  Comte  maintained  that  this 
natural  order  of  the  sciences  is  also  the  his- 
torical order  in  which  the  sciences  themselves 
appeared  and  our  knowledge  of  them  devel- 
oped. Here  Comte  was  clearly  wrong,  although 
there  are  some  appearances  of  truth  in  the 
contention.  This  gave  Spencer  a  chance  to 
show  Comte's  error,  and  although  the  point  is 
of  small  importance,  many  of  Spencer's  unin- 
formed admirers  thought  that  the  French- 
man's philosophy  was  hereby  overthrown. 

In  discussing  the  science  we  now  call  Psy- 
chology, Comte  became  unfortunately  entan- 
gled with  Phrenology.  It  should  be  remem- 
bered, however,  that  in  Comte's  day  Phrenol- 
ogy had  not  become  the  disgraced,  unscien- 
tific charlatan  it  now  is. 

Again,  Comte  had  become  so  flatly  opposed 
to  unfounded  metaphysical  speculations  that 
he  went  to  lamentable  extremes  and  declared 
insoluble,  problems  that  were  in  process  of 
solution  as  he  sat  writing  his  denunciation  of 
the   attempt.     He   declared   dogmatically   the 


AUGUST   COMTE  175 

utter  impossibility  of  ever  ascertaining  the 
chemical  constitution  of  the  heavenly  bodies 
—  and  this  when  Fraunhofer  and  Wollaston 
had  already  laid  the  foundations  for  this  dis- 
covery, which,  as  everybody  knows,  has  since 
been  made. 

We  now  come  to  one  of  the  most  valuable 
of  Comte's  theories.  He  insists  that  another 
test  of  the  validity  of  his  scientific  categories 
is  to  be  found  in  the  state  of  positiveness  at 
which  any  science  has  arrived.  Each  science, 
like  each  individual  and  like  the  race  itself, 
passes  through  the  three  successive  stages, 
theological,  metaphysical  and  positive. 

Astronomy,  the  most  general  of  all,  has 
passed  through  the  theological  and  metaphys- 
ical stages  and  has  now  reached  the  positive 
or  scientific  stage.  This  is  undoubtedly  the 
case  even  though  the  uninformed  often  make 
their  first  appeal  in  behalf  of  religious  beliefs 
to  the  majesty  and  grandeur  of  the  heavens. 
There  is  in  reality  no  department  of  human 
thought  where  the  supernatural  has  been  so 
completely  abolished  and  natural  law  recog- 
nized as  supreme,  as  in  astronomy.  It  is  a 
long  time  since  any  scientist  of  repute  tried 
to  find  in  astronomy  a  niche  in  which  to  hide 
his  gods.  Lester  F.  Ward  well  says :  "About 
the   last   instance   of   this    kind   was   that   of 


17(3    TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE  BLIND 

Newton,  who  brought  in  the  divine  agency  to 
account  for  so  much  of  observation  as  his  the- 
ory failed  to  explain,  and  this  is  now  set  down 
as  one  of  the  unfortunate  weak  points  in  his 
biography  to  be  forgotten  as  fast  as  possible." 

Physics,  which  comes  next  in  generality  and 
next  in  the  classification,  although  next  most 
positive,  is  still  in  the  grip  of  metaphysical 
conceptions.  In  biology  metaphysics  and  the- 
ology still  have  a  losing  hold  and  every  day 
sees  the  biological  sciences  become  more  posi- 
tive and  less  theological  and  metaphysical. 

Now  we  come  to  that  science  of  which 
Comte  is  generally  conceded  to  be  the  founder, 
the  science  of  society  —  sociology.  Comte 
justly  declares  this  late-born  and  highly  com- 
plex science  to  be  still  in  the  theological  and 
metaphysical  stage,  with  theological  ideas 
dominating.  This  is  in  itself  proof  that  the 
science  is  in  its  infancy,  just  as  a  theological 
type  of  mind  was  inseparable  from  the  infancy 
of  the  race,  and  seems  to  be  inseparable  from 
the  infancy  of  the  individual.  In  ethics  the 
case  is  even  worse. 

The  whole  development  of  society  is  popu- 
larly supposed  to  be  subject  to  providence;  to 
control  of  a  divine  will  which  is  independent 
of  law  and  the  fiats  of  which  cannot  be  pre- 
vised or  even  understood.    This  means  death 


AUGUST    COMTE  177 

to  science  wherever  it  may  be  found  and  the 
history  of  science  is  the  story  of  the  over- 
throw of  this  theological  position  in  one  field 
after  another.  This  was  accomplished  by  the 
discovery  of  those  laws  of  nature  —  or  "meth- 
ods of  nature"  as  Lewes,  Comte's  great  disci- 
ple, called  them,  —  which  really  prevail  every- 
where in  the  universe. 

Newton,  Kant  and  Laplace  drove  theology 
out  of  astronomy  by  discovering  gravity  and 
nebulae.  Mayer,  Helmholtz  and  Lavoisier 
emancipated  chemistry  from  superstition  with 
the  conservation  of  energy  and  the  indestruct- 
ibility of  matter.  Lamarck,  Darwin  and  a 
great  army  of  their  colleagues  and  disciples 
have  since  Comte's  day  driven  the  shadowy 
spectres  of  theology  out  of  biology  with  evo- 
lution and  natural  selection.  Comte  struggled 
to  do  as  much  for  Sociology  and  failed  com- 
pletely. His  great  merit  is  that  he  saw  the 
need  of  such  a  science  and  foresaw  the  nature 
of  its  task. 

The  actual  accomplishment  of  that  task  was 
left  to  men  whose  training  in  social  and  polit- 
ical philosophy  was  vastly  superior  to  that  of 
the  Frenchman.  Two  Germans,  Karl  Marx 
and  Frederick  Engels,  two  of  the  clearest  and 
most  cogent  thinkers  the  last  century  pro- 
duced, took  up  this  labor  where  Comte  laid 


178        TEN   BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE   BLIND 

it  down  —  or  rather,  where  Comte  broke  down. 

These  two  men  by  their  joint  labors  carried 
sociology  out  of  its  theological  infancy  and 
its  metaphysical  childhood  into  the  full  man- 
hood of  science.  These  men  gave  us  the  great 
social  law  which  makes  all  theological  notions 
and  metaphysical  speculations  henceforth  as 
obsolete  in  sociology  as  they  have  long  been 
in  astronomy  and  physics.  This  law  is  called 
"The  Materialistic  Conception  of  History"  by 
some,  and  "Economic  Determinism"  by  others. 
It  is  to  sociology  what  Natural  Selection  is 
to  biology  or  the  Law  of  Gravitation  to  astron- 
omy. By  this  discovery  Marx  becomes  the 
Newton  of  political  economy  and  historical 
philosophy  and  the  Darwin  of  Sociology. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  here  to  go  at  great 
length  into  the  absurd  Utopian  social  scheme 
which  Comte  advanced.  It  has  been  aban- 
doned everywhere  except  by  here  and  there 
a  belated  follower.     v 

He  was  opposed  to  the  use  of  that  powerful 
weapon  which  the  working  men  of  his  day 
were  already  looking  toward  —  political  action. 
His  condemnation  of  this  method  was  aimed 
at  the  precursors  of  the  present  Social  Demo- 
crats. He  naively  explains  that  he  expects  the 
rich  to  support  him  in  this  attitude  —  as  they 


AUGUST    COMTE  179 

did,  of  course,  so  long  as  it  only  meant  political 
action  by  their  opponents. 

In  Comte's  positivist  society  there  was  to 
be  four  social  orders.  Capitalists  to  supply 
the  direction  of  industry;  workers  to  give 
their  labor  for  production;  women  who  were 
to  provide  social  feeling;  and  a  new  priest- 
hood of  philosophers  who  were  to  provide 
education  and  arbitrate  all  difficulties  between 
capital  and  labor,  and  persuade  labor  not  to 
resort  to  force  or  political  action  but  always 
give  heed  to  the  moral  suasion  of  their  supe- 
riors. 

Comte  wrote  a  great  deal  of  extravagant 
and  senseless  flattery  of  women  in  general 
and  his  own  wife  in  particular,  but  he  never- 
theless proposes  to  leave  about  their  wrists 
that  old  and  cankering  chain  —  economic  de- 
pendence. Women  are  to  be  supported  like 
all  the  other  orders, by  the  labor  of  the  workers, 
who  are  to  be  men  only.  Capitalists  are  to 
have  an  honored  place  as  directors  of  indus- 
try, and  there  is  some  considerable  space  and 
effort  devoted  to  the  folly  of  Socialists  who 
propose  to  abolish  them.  The  evolution  of 
the  capitalist  from  a  useful  director  to  a  use- 
less parasitic  owner,  although  it  had  begun, 
was,  as  yet,  invisible  to  Comte. 

All  this  was  to  be  brought  about  by  posi- 


180        TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

tivist  clubs,  which  were  to  be  established  in 
all  the  cities  of  the  civilized  world  and  have 
for  their  object  the  propaganda  of  this  philos- 
ophy with  its  new-old  social  order. 

It  is  another  case  of  the  irony  of  fate  that 
such  clubs  and  groups  have  been  established 
in  almost  every  town  and  city  in  the  civilized 
world  —  but  alas  they  are  not  composed,  as 
Comte  dreamed,  of  the  advocates  of  a  four- 
class  society;  they  are  made  up  of  the  Social 
Democrats  he  so  fluently  condemned.  And 
these  Social  Democrats  advocate  a  society  that 
will  be  classless,  where  women  will  be  eco- 
nomically independent  of  men  or  each  other, 
where  the  capitalist  will  be  transformed  into 
a  worker,  no  matter  how  much  he  may  protest 
against  the  metamorphosis,  and  the  workers 
will  direct  their  own  affairs  without  requiring 
hierarchies  of  alleged  superiors  to  do  it  for 
them. 


■■■ 


X. 

Bishop   Spalding. 

The  Bishop,  in  his  book,  "Socialism  and 
Labor/'  presents  a  very  interesting  study  of 
the  past  trying  to  reconcile  itself  with  the 
present  and  stave  off  the  future.  There  is 
much  flowery  language  and  specious  argument 
which  might  give  the  superficial  reader  the 
impression  that  the  reverend  author  is  pro- 
gressive. But  whenever  he  sounds  a  clear 
note  and  presents  what  are  obviously  his  real 
convictions  he  is  invariably  bewailing  the  de- 
parture of  feudal  pietism  before  the  rising  sun 
of  modern  science. 

When  it  comes  to  analyzing  the  causes  of 
this  revolutionary  and  distressing  change,  he 
displays  considerable  insight.     He  says: 

"The  social  organism  is  so  vast  and  so  com- 
plex that  it  seems  hopeless  to  attempt  to  inter- 
fere, and  so  we  permit  things  to  take  their 
course,  abdicating  the  freedom  and  the  power 
of  will  in  the  presence  of  an  idol  which  we 
call  Destiny.  The  more  public  opinion  is 
shaped  by  the  ideals  of  evolution  as  the  su- 

181 


182        TEN   BLIND   LEADERS   OF   THE    BLIND 

preme  law  of  life,  the  less  capable  we  become 
of  bringing  reason  and  conscience  to  bear  on 
human  affairs  and  of  recognizing  God's  pres- 
ence in  the  world." 

This  clear  recognition  of  the  destructive  ten- 
dencies of  evolutionary  science  where  ortho- 
dox religion  is  concerned  is  wholly  refreshing. 

When  Spalding  insists  that  the  theory  of 
evolution  abolishes  free  will,  and  makes  dif- 
ficult the  recognition  of  God's  presence  in  the 
world,  he  is  on  solid  ground.  When  we  rec- 
ognize human  actions  as  due  to  environment 
or  heredity,  or  any  specific  cause,  and  per- 
ceive that  here,  as  everywhere  else  in  the  uni- 
verse, there  is  the  operation  of  natural  law, 
the  freedom  of  the  will  becomes  a  chimera. 

While  the  doctrine  of  evolution  may  leave 
ample  room  for  the  deity  outside  the  universe, 
the  Bishop  makes  no  mistake  when  he  asserts 
its  tendency  to  abolish  him  from  the  interior. 
For  example,  since  we  have  had  a  science  of 
meteorology  it  has  been  much  more  difficult 
to  find  men  who  will  pray  for  rain,  and,  as 
Huxley  said,  our  prayers  for  rain  are  very 
half-hearted  when  the  wind  blows  from  the 
wrong  quarter.  Even  the  pious  regard  prayer 
for  the  victim  of  a  slight  cold  as  unnecessary, 
and  for  one  in  the  final  stages  of  tuberculosis 
or  cancer  as  useless,  and  as  to  just  where  its 


BISHOP    SPALDING  183 

value  begins  or  ends  is  a  question  of  scientific 
training.  The  more  one  knows  of  science  the 
more  he  is  disposed  to  depend  on  work  and 
the  less  will  he  rely  on  prayer. 

The  Bishop  also  regards  evolution  as  respon- 
sible for  the  suspension  of  progress,  when  he 
says,  as  quoted,  that  under  its  influence  "we 
become  less  capable  of  bringing  reason  and 
conscience  to  bear  on  human  affairs." 

The  premise  on  which  he  founds  this  con- 
clusion is  not  far  to  seek.  He  argues  that 
Christianity  has  applied  "reason  and  con- 
science" —  especially  conscience  —  to  human 
affairs,"  and  that  this  has  been  a  main  factor 
in  the  development  of  civilization;  evolution 
destroys  this  factor,  therefore  it  suspends  the 
further  development  of  society. 

If  we  concede  the  premise,  it  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  see  how  we  are  to  escape  the  conclu- 
sion. Wherever  the  weakness  may  lie,  it  is 
certainly  not  in  the  Bishop's  logic. 

He  says: 

"Wherever  influences  have  been  active  in 
the  abolition  of  slavery,  in  securing  popular 
rights,  free  government,  protection  for  chil- 
dren and  the  poor,  in  bringing  knowledge 
within  the  reach  of  all,  and  thereby  spreading 
abroad  juster  and  more  humane  principles  of 
conduct,  have  also  wrought  for  the  welfare 


134        TEN   BLIND   LEADERS  OF   THE   BLIND 

of  woman;  and  it  is  not  necessary  to  point 
out  how  intimately  all  this  progress  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  social  action  of  the  Christian 
religion." 

Whoever  has  read  history  for  himself,  and 
not  by  proxy,  through  a  priest,  will  be  some- 
what taken  aback  at  the  Bishop's  cool  assump- 
tion that  the  good  things  catalogued  above, 
owe  their  origin  or  increase  to  the  "social 
action  of  the  Christian  religion,"  especially 
Spalding's  particular  brand  of  it.  When  he  says 
"it  is  not  necessary"  to  point  out  the  relation 
of  these  two  things  to  each  other,  he  is  right; 
it  is  not  necessary,  and  not  until  we  forget  the 
humiliation  of  Galileo,  or  the  fate  of  Vesalius 
and  Bruno,  will  it  ever  become  necessary. 

Speaking  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 
Bishop  says: 

"It  shall  stand  forth  as  the  one  in  which 
the  Christian  peoples  made  the  greatest  and 
most  real  progress  in  knowledge,  in  freedom 
and  in  power." 

Here,  of  course,  the  inference  is  that  the 
progress  of  the  modern  nations  is  due  to  their 
being  Christian. 

This  question  of  the  cause  of  national  pro- 
gress is  of  great  importance  and  it  is  one  about 
which  the  Socialist  philosophy  has  a  good  deal 
to  say. 


BISHOP    SPALDING  185 

The  Bishop's  view  has  the  merit  of  clear- 
ness. The  Orientals  are  Mohammedans,  or 
Buddhists,  or  Brahmins,  therefore  unprogress- 
ive.  The  western  nations  are  Christian,  there- 
fore progressive.  We  must  not,  however,  be 
misled  here  by  the  use  of,  Orientals — of  the 
East  and  Christians  of  the  West,  and  thereby 
make  the  Bishop's  concept  geographical,  for, 
be  it  remembered,  Christianity  itself  is  of 
Oriental  origin. 

Besides  this  theory  which  ascribes  progress 
to  creed,  there  is  another  which  imputes  it  to 
race.  The  ethnologist,  who  deals  with  racial 
differences,  points  out  that  the  non-progressive 
races  are  black,  or  yellow,  or  red,  or  brown; 
the  progressive  races  are  white.  So  that  Truth- 
ful James'  question,  "Is  the  Caucasian  played 
out?"  was  equal  to  "is  progress  exhausted?" 

In  the  Marxian  conception,  this  race  factor 
is  recognized  as  having  importance,  and  is 
given  a  place,  though  not  the  first.  The  creed 
theory  it  totally  rejects;  regarding  any  creed 
as  belonging  almost  entirely  to  the  domain  of 
effect  rather  than  of  cause. 

But  Socialism  advances  a  cause  which 
neither  of  these  schools  recognize ;  it  regards 
those  social  changes  which  constitute  social 
progress  as  due  to  changes  in  the  mode  by 
which  the  peoples  affected  produce  and  dis- 


186         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

tribute  their  wealth.  Although  this  is  n.ot 
the  only  factor  recognized  by  the  Marxian  con- 
cept, including  as  it  does  due  recognition  of 
race,  climate,  fertility  of  soil,  mineral  wealth, 
geographical  position,  etc.  —  all  "material" 
factors  —  yet  this  "economic"  factor  is,  and 
must  remain  the  "chief"  factor  in  our  theory, 
as  it  is  in  fact. 

We  ask  where  is  there  a  nation  which  has 
reached  modern  civilization  without  adopting 
the  capitalist  mode  of  production?  If  we  are 
asked  where  is  the  nation  which  has  achieved 
our  civilization  without  being  white,  or  accept- 
ing Christianity,  we  answer  —  Japan.  Not  by 
our  sending  missionaries,  but  by  the  Japanese 
importing  our  machinery,  has  Japan  become 
one  of  the  leading  bourgeois  powers. 

There  are  not  lacking  those  who  contend 
that  the  western  nations  have  advanced,  not 
because  of  creeds,  but  in  spite  of  them.  These 
people  do  not  rest  their  arguments  against 
the  creed-makers  merely  on  the  past  behavior 
of  the  latter,  they  maintain  that  the  theologian 
is  today,  as  aiways,  a  reactionary. 

As  an  example  of  this,  we  may  observe  the 
Bishop's  opposition  to  public  schools.  He 
says: 

"The  State  has  taken  control  of  education, 
and   is   thereby   weakening  one   of  the   most 


BISHOP   SPALDING  187 

essential  and  vital  social  forces  —  the  sense  of 
responsibility  in  parents.  It  has,  in  conse- 
quence, been  led-  to  exclude  religious  instruc- 
tion from  the  process  of  education ;  has,  in- 
deed, abandoned  the  work  of  education,  and 
contented  itself  with  some  sort  of  mental  train- 
ing which  sharpens  the  intellect  but  leaves  the 
moral  nature  untouched  and  unraised.  As  a 
result,  the  young  lose  reverence,  lose  the 
power  of  discerning  what  is  high  and  noble, 
and  are  only  a  more  enlightened  sort  of  bar- 
barians. Had  the  State  confined  itself  to  en- 
couraging and  assisting  the  religious  denom- 
inations to  found  and  maintain  schools,  and 
to  giving  aid  to  private  educational  enter- 
prises, it  would  have  acted  in  harmony  with 
our  theory  of  government,  and  we  should  be 
today  a  worthier,  more  religious  and  not  less 
enlightened  people ;  while,  from  an  economic 
point  of  view,  education  would  have  been  made 
vastly  cheaper." 

Whatever  truth  there  may  be  in  the  conten- 
tion as  to  the  greater  cheapness  of  parochial 
school  education,  may  be  safely  set  down  to 
the  inferior  quality  of  the  parochial  article. 
The  crowding  of  too  many  children  into  one 
class  is  a  vice  of  the  public  schools;  it  is  still 
worse  in  the  parochial  schools. 

Again,  in  the  public  schools  teachers'  sal- 


188         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

aries  are  too  low  so  that  the  best  brains  seek 
other  professions.  In  the  parochial  schools 
the  wages  of  teachers  are  still  smaller  and 
their  mental  equipment  correspondingly  lower. 
The  mental  status  of  teachers  is  not  increased 
by  regarding  as  important  the  ability  to  recite 
catechisms  and  count  beads. 

Happily  the  Bishop  is  a  voice  crying  in  the 
wilderness  when  he  says  that  education  should 
be  limited  to  private  enterprise.  We  have  not 
forgotten  what  a  tragedy-farce  the  private 
schools  were  in  the  good  old  days  when  they 
had  the  field  to  themselves.  Their  funeral 
knell  rang  when  Charles  Dickens  wrote  "Nich- 
olas Nickleby,,  and  gave  the  world  a  glimpse 
of  the  ill-starred  Smike. 

He  bemoans  the  exclusion  of  religious  in- 
struction from  the  schools,  but  seems  to  rea- 
lize its  inevitability  after  the  schools  were 
once  taken  charge  of  by  the  State.  Here  again 
he  is  right.  The  various  attempts  of  the 
authorities  to  allow  religious  teaching  in  the 
schools  have  always  given  the  public  a  chance 
to  observe  how  farcical  it  was.  Especially 
has  this  been  the  case  in  Protestant  countries 
where  the  church  itself  is  split  into  so  many 
small  pieces. 

The  moment  the  school  door  is  thrown  open 
to  religious  teaching,  a  bitter  and  disgraceful 


BISHOP   SPALDING  189 

quarrel  begins  as  to  which  of  these  fanatical 
sects  shall  do  the  instructing.  Presently  the 
fur  flies  in  a  way  that  would  make  a  Kilkenny 
cat  fight  look  like  a  peace  conference.  Then 
a  disgusted  public  speaks  up  and  says  there 
shall  be  no  more  of  it.  Thus  is  progress 
achieved  through  the  internecine  strife  of  its 
enemies. 

To  say  that  the  public  school  weakens  par- 
ental responsibility  is  a  rather  mild  and  polite 
way  of  saying  that  the  public  school  tends  to 
break  up  the  home.  If  the  Bishop  believed 
that  all  children  should  be  educated  at  home 
by  their  parents  themselves  this  objection 
might  have  some  weight,  but  it  is  not  easy  to 
see  how  parental  responsibility  is  weakened 
by  sending  them  out  to  a  public  school  any 
more  than  by  sending  them  out  to  a  parochial 
school  in  the  next  block.  The  argument  that 
in  the  latter  case  the  parent  has  more  to  say 
about  the  kind  of  education  given  is  more 
specious  than  true.  The  truth  is  that  it  is 
the  priest  who  is  served  and  not  the  parent; 
wherever  the  wishes  of  the  priest  and  the 
parent  conflict  the  priest's  will  prevails. 

[At  this  point  in  the  lecture  a  priest  sitting 
about  the  middle  of  the  main  floor  interrupted 
and  asked  to  be  allowed  to  ask  a  question. 
Mr.   Lewis   agreed.      He   said:      "When   the 


190         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OP  THE  BLIND 

Catholic  church  undertakes  the  work  of  edu- 
cation through  its  parochial  schools,  does  it 
not  shoulder  a  heavy  burden?"  Mr.  Lewis 
replied :  "Yes,  the  burden  is  indeed  too  heavy 
for  them ;  they  have  our  sympathy ;  they  have  it 
to  such  an  extent  that  we  propose  to  befriend 
them  by  relieving  them  of  that  great  burden."] 

On  this  question  of  leaving  children  to  the 
tender  mercies  of  private  enterprise,  Spencer 
and  Spalding  stand  on  common  ground.  Spen- 
cer foresaw  what  Spalding  overlooked,  viz.: 
that  the  logical  outcome  of  the  State's  train- 
ing the  child's  mind  would  eventually  be  the 
State's  feeding  the  child's  body.  Spencer  was 
appalled  at  the  idea  of  so  far  interfering  with 
the  rights  of  the  individual  (in  this  case  the 
right  of  parents  to  starve  their  children  if  they 
could  not  afford  to  give  them  food,  and  the 
right  of  the  child  to  starve  should  its  parents 
be  poor).  It  is  clear  that  Spalding  would  have 
agreed  with  Spencer  on  this  point  also,  for  he 
says :  "The  tendency  is  now  to  give  the  State 
control  of  the  public  charities  and  works  of 
reform,  whereas  the  proper  method  to  pursue 
is  to  have  the  State  encourage  and  assist  de- 
nominational and  private  beneficence." 

And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  only  cities 
in  the  world  where  school  children  are  prop- 
erly fed,  bathed  and  clothed  are  those  Euro- 


BISHOP   SPALDING  191 

pean  municipalities  such  as  Lille,  Ivry,  Mont- 
lucon,  etc.,  where  Socialists  are  in  a  majority 
on  the  city  council.  The  agitation  for  simi- 
lar provisions  in  the  public  schools  of  England 
has  greatly  increased  since  the  Socialists  in- 
creased their  strength. 

For  these  provisional  measures,  pending  the 
establishment  of  a  saner  social  order,  Social- 
ists are  proud  to  be  held  responsible. 

We  believe  with  John  Ruskin:  "Whether 
there  be  one  God  or  three;  no  God  or  ten 
thousand,  children  should  be  fed,  and  their 
bodies  should  be  kept  clean." 

There  is  another  reason  for  the  abolition  of 
theological  education  from  the  public  schools, 
and  the  triumph  of  the  schools  so  emancipated 
over  their  theological  competitors.  This  rea- 
son goes  to  the  core  of  the  problem. 

A  stupid  slave  was  good  enough  for  feudal- 
ism. This  because  the  feudal  mode  of  pro- 
duction was  exceedingly  simple,  being  really 
nothing  but  the  daily  repetition  of  a  few  acts. 
The  serf  required  very  little  instruction  to 
make  him  an  efficient  slave,  and  the  less  he 
received,  consistent  with  this  efficiency,  the 
less  likely  was  he  to  revolt.  So  his  masters, 
lay  and  spiritual,  kept  his  mind  enshrouded  in 
darkness. 

To  reduce  education  to  this  happy  mean  has 


192         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

also  been  the  constant  aim  of  the  bourgeoise. 
But  the  standard  for  an  effective  wage-slave 
is  vastly  higher  than  it  was  for  the  serf.  The 
wage-slave  must  handle,  and  indeed  create, 
complex  machinery,  he  must  understand  intri- 
cate processes.  If  his  labor  is  to  produce  a 
maximum  of  surplus  value,  reading  and  writ- 
ing can  only  be  the  beginning  of  his  educa- 
tion. Many  skilled  mechanics  require  and  pos- 
sess an  education  that  is  essentially  superior 
to  that  of  the  average  university  man. 

These  workers  the  capitalist  must  have  and 
a  theological  atmosphere  fails  to  produce 
them.  The  capitalist  is  willing  to  have  his 
workers  kept  sufficiently  ignorant  to  keep 
them  from  rebelling,  but  he  must  have  a  sys- 
tem of  education  that  will  not  wholly  destroy 
their  natural  intelligence  and  render  them 
hopelessly  stupid. 

Bourgeois  nations,  which  have  retained  the 
theological  education  of  the  parochial  schools, 
have  paid  the  penalty;  they  have  been  driven 
to  the  wall  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  The 
capitalist's  present  need  for  an  educated  slave 
reveals  one  of  the  inherent  contradictions  of 
bourgeois  society.  "Educated  slave"  is  a  con- 
tradiction of  terms,  and  the  rule  of  capital  is 
doomed  to  meet  defeat  at  the  hands  of  a  soda' 
force  of  its  own  creation. 


BISHOP   SPALDING  193 

No  matter  what  happens  the  Bishop  is  deter- 
mined that  the  State  should  keep  its  hands  off 
education  and  everything  else.     He  says : 

"There  is  in  innumerable  minds,  who  have 
a  horror  of  the  current  Socialistic  doctrines, 
an  unconscious  leaning  toward  Socialism, 
which  is  seen  in  the  tendency  to  enlarge  the 
powers  of  the  State.  The  founders  of  the 
Republic  held  that  the  State  should  assume 
no  authority  over  the  individual,  save  such  as 
is  indispensable  to  the  general  welfare. " 

That  is  precisely  the  point  at  issue,  that 
question  as  to  what  is  and  what  is  not  "indis- 
pensable to  the  general  welfare."  The  major- 
ity of  Americans  regard  the  public  schools  as 
"indispensable  to  the  general  welfare,,  and  are 
little  disposed  to  give  any  serious  considera- 
tion to  the  Bishop's  opinions  to  the  contrary. 
The  Socialist  is  just  as  well  satisfied  with  this 
premise  as  the  Bishop  seems  to  be.  He  be- 
lieves the  abolition  of  private  property  in  the 
instruments  of  production,  is  "indispensable 
to  the  general  welfare." 

This  argument  places  the  whole  matter  on 
a  utilitarian  basis,  which  experience  has  shown 
to  be  very  dangerous  ground  to  take  for  a 
Bishop,  who  is  committed  in  advance  to  a 
certain  position,  no  matter  what  facts  may 
develop  later. 


194         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

How  thoroughly  reactionary  the  Bishop  is 
on  this  whole  question  of  education  comes  out 
in  his  statement  as  to  what  should  be  its  chief 
aim.     He  formulates  it  thus: 

"The  proper  nourishment  of  our  spiritual 
being  is  not  knowledge  or  speculative  truth. 
What  we  merely  know  hardly  enters  into  the 
fiber  of  our  higher  nature.  Hence  the  infor- 
mation we  get  in  school  about  the  surface  of 
the  earth  and  the  stars,  about  kings  and  wars, 
about  algebraic  and  geometric  problems,  about 
philosophies  and  literatures,  neither  makes  a 
deep  impression  nor  is  long  remembered.  Such 
information  does  not  so  attract  us  as  to  cause 
us  to  live  with  it  and  find  in  it  our  habitual 
nourishment.  It  has  therefore  little  to  do 
with  the  formation  of  character.  When  we 
ask  what  kind  of  man  one  is,  we  do  not  mean 
to  inquire  about  his  information  or  his  pos- 
sessions, but  about  his  character;  and  to  get 
insight  into  his  character  we  wish  to  learn, 
not  what  he  knows,  but  what  in  his  inmost 
soul  he  believes,  hopes  and  strives  for." 

There  is  no  mistaking  the  meaning  of  this. 
It  means  the  superiority  of  faith  over  knowl- 
edge, of  gullibility  and  credulity  over  scien- 
tific caution  and  a  determination  to  get  at 
the  facts.  It  is  the  proclamation  of  the  supe- 
riority of  the  priest  over  the  scientist,  and, 


BISHOP   SPALDING  195 

quite  naturally,  by  a  priest.  If  we  allow  Hux- 
ley to  speak  for  the  other  side  of  this  ques- 
tion, he  boldly  asserts  that  to  believe  without 
good  evidence  is  immoral. 

One  of  the  shrewdest  tricks  of  every  ruling 
class,  and  particularly  the  present  one  and  its 
intellectual  lackeys,  is  to  glorify  poverty.  It 
is  here  that  bourgeois  hypocrisy  rises  to  its 
high-water  mark.  Here  the  Bishop  is  in  his 
native  element. 

Speaking  of  the  social  gulf  between  rich  and 
poor  he  says: 

"That  the  cause  of  this  disparity  of  condi- 
tion is  moral  rather  than  economic,  whoever 
observes  may  see;  and  this  fact  gives  empha- 
sis to  the  great  truth  that  all  real  ameliora- 
tion in  the  lot  of  human  beings  depends  on 
religious,  moral  and  intellectual  conditions. 
Money  does  not  make  a  miser  rich  nor  its 
lack  a  true  man  poor." 

Again : 

"For  the  most  fortunate  men  life  is  full  of 
difficulties  and  troubles ;  for  the  poorest  it  may 
be  filled  with  light,  peace  and  blessedness." 

Be  it  observed  that  the  light  here  referred 
to  is  spiritual  light,  "the  light  that  never  shone 
on  sea  or  shore."  Other  kinds  of  vulgar  and 
largely  unnecessary  (though  not  for  Bishops) 
light  such  as  electric  light,  and  gas  light,  and 


\cQ         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE   BLIND 

sunlight,  "the  poorest"  usually  contrive  to  dis- 
pense with.  Experience  also  shows  that  the 
bishops  have  always  been  willing  to  take  the 
money,  and  leave  "the  poorest"  all  the  bless- 
edness. 

Really,  Socialism  would  not  be  so  obnoxious 
to  this  kindly  old  gentleman  if  it  did  not  pro- 
pose to  abolish  that  poverty  which  he  regards 
as  "indispensable  to  the  general  —  and  spir- 
itual —  welfare  of  those  who  suffer  it  —  though 
he  himself  wants  none  of  it.  Poverty  is  a 
very  good  thing  —  for  somebody  else.  Any- 
body is  welcome  to  Spalding's  share. 

He  says: 

"In  a  Socialist  State,  in  which  the  universal 
ideal  is  that  of  physical  well-being  and  com- 
fort, the  sublimer  moods  which  make  saints, 
heroes,  and  men  of  genius  possible  would  no 
longer  be  called  forth.  If  all  should  receive 
the  same  reward,  whatever  their  labor,  spon- 
taneity would  come  to  an  end  and  progress 
cease,  and  such  an  equality  would  finally  come 
to  be  a  universal  equality  in  indolence,  pov- 
erty and  low  thinking;  while  from  an  ethical 
point  of  view,  it  would  seem  to  be  unjust  that 
the  same  reward  should  be  given  to  ever  kind 
of  labor." 

All  men  are  convinced  of  the  value  to  soci- 
ety of  men  of  genius,  so  long  a*  they  do  not 


BISHOP   SPALDING  197 

come  before  we  are  rea^dy  for  them,  which, 
unfortunately,  they  usually  do.  Anyhow  our 
children  repair  the  wrong  with  monuments  of 
stone  for  the  loaves  of  bread  which  we  denied 
them.  Now  comes  Socialism  with  a  proposal 
to  make  the  bread  supply  independent  of  any 
particular  degree  of  brightness  or  dullness,  so 
that  even  a  genius  need  not  necessarily  starve 
to  death. 

But  the  Bishop  will  have  nothing  to  do  with 
any  such  unprecedented  innovation.  Every- 
body knows  that  genius  and  a  garret  are  in- 
separably joined,  and  what  providence  has  thus 
put  together  let  not  sacriligious  persons  take 
apart.  Away  with  these  hare-brained  Utopian 
enthusiasts  who  imagine  that  genius  might  be 
able  to  thrive  without  being  starved  in  a 
garret. 

What  malformed  brain  was  that  which  gave 
forth  the  idea  that  all  labor  might  or  should 
receive  the  same  reward?  Why  should  society 
treat  two  men  alike?  Why  should  a  man  who 
makes  bricks  have  as  good  food  as  a  man  who 
makes  sermons?  Why  should  the  man  who 
shingled  the  Bishop's  dwelling  live  in  as  good 
a  house  as  the  Bishop  himself?  The  Bishop 
asks  why  and  his  own  answer  is — prepos- 
terous ! 

And  now  we  feel  at  liberty  to  ask  the  indig- 


198         TEN  BLIND  LEADERS  OF  THE  BLIND 

nant  follower  of  the  lowly  Nazarene  what  he 
and  his  like  have  meant  by  this  two  thousand 
years  of  cant  about  the  Fatherhood  of  God 
and  the  brotherhood  of  man?  What  kind  of 
a  brotherhood?  A  brotherhood  in  which  the 
brother  with  a  weaker  body  or  less  cunning 
brain,  shall  be  fed  on  poorer  food  and  wear 
inferior  clothing,  and  live  in  a  less  desirable 
house?  Is  this  the  mouse  your  mountain  has 
brought  forth  after  all  these  centuries  of  labor? 
Nay,  gentlemen,  you  are  not  in  earnest.  You 
have  found  for  yourselves  that  "physical  com- 
fort and  well-being"  which  you  are  afraid 
would  be  so  harmful  to  others,  and  now  in 
your  easy  chairs,  in  your  comfortable  parlors, 
you  have  forgotten  your  mission  —  if  you 
ever  had  one. 

The  world  is  weary  of  your  pretenses.  It 
no  longer  fears  your  fulminations.  You  have 
had  your  chance  and  you  have  always  brought 
ridicule  upon  the  best  there  is  in  your  faith, 
and  now  it  requests  you  to  step  aside  and 
give  room  to  earnest  men  and  sincere  women,, 
who  really  believe  in,  and  labor  to  realize  that 
doctrine  of  human  brotherhood  which  you  have 
preached  so  long  in  sniffling  tones,  and  which 
in  your  hearts  you  have  always  despised. 


U.  C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


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